them, seeming to kindle something in their
souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the
roses.

Paul looked into Miriam's eyes. She was pale and expectant with wonder,
her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. His look seemed
to travel down into her. Her soul quivered. It was the communion she
wanted. He turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the bush.

"They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves," he
said.

She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others
expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her
hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in
worship.

"Let us go," he said.

There was a cool scent of ivory roses--a white, virgin scent. Something
made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence.

"Till Sunday," he said quietly, and left her; and she walked home
slowly, feeling her soul satisfied with the holiness of the night. He
stumbled down the path. And as soon as he was out of the wood, in the
free open meadow, where he could breathe, he started to run as fast as
he could. It was like a delicious delirium in his veins.

Always when he went with Miriam, and it grew rather late, he knew his
mother was fretting and getting angry about him--why, he could not
understand. As he went into the house, flinging down his cap, his mother
looked up at the clock. She had been sitting thinking, because a chill
to her eyes prevented her reading. She could feel Paul being drawn away
by this girl. And she did not care for Miriam. "She is one of those who
will want to suck a man's soul out till he has none of his own left,"
she said to herself; "and he is just such a gaby as to let himself be
absorbed. She will never let him become a man; she never will." So,
while he was away with Miriam, Mrs. Morel grew more and more worked up.

She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired:

"You have been far enough to-night."

His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank.

"You must have been right home with her," his mother continued.

He would not answer. Mrs. Morel, looking at him quickly, saw his hair
was damp on his forehead with haste, saw him frowning in his heavy
fashion, resentfully.

"She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can't get away from her,
but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night."

He was hurt between the pas