t sheathing to prevent the night and the space breaking into
him? How he hated her! And then, what a rush of tenderness and humility!

Suddenly he plunged on again, running home. His mother saw on him the
marks of some agony, and she said nothing. But he had to make her talk
to him. Then she was angry with him for going so far with Miriam.

"Why don't you like her, mother?" he cried in despair.

"I don't know, my boy," she replied piteously. "I'm sure I've tried to
like her. I've tried and tried, but I can't--I can't!"

And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two.

Spring was the worst time. He was changeable, and intense and cruel.
So he decided to stay away from her. Then came the hours when he knew
Miriam was expecting him. His mother watched him growing restless.
He could not go on with his work. He could do nothing. It was as if
something were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on
his hat and went, saying nothing. And his mother knew he was gone. And
as soon as he was on the way he sighed with relief. And when he was with
her he was cruel again.

One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with Miriam sitting
beside him. It was a glistening, white-and-blue day. Big clouds, so
brilliant, went by overhead, while shadows stole along on the water. The
clear spaces in the sky were of clean, cold blue. Paul lay on his back
in the old grass, looking up. He could not bear to look at Miriam. She
seemed to want him, and he resisted. He resisted all the time. He wanted
now to give her passion and tenderness, and he could not. He felt that
she wanted the soul out of his body, and not him. All his strength and
energy she drew into herself through some channel which united them. She
did not want to meet him, so that there were two of them, man and woman
together. She wanted to draw all of him into her. It urged him to an
intensity like madness, which fascinated him, as drug-taking might.

He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she were
fingering the very quivering tissue, the very protoplasm of life, as
she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And in the end it
frightened her. There he lay in the white intensity of his search,
and his voice gradually filled her with fear, so level it was, almost
inhuman, as if in a trance.

"Don't talk any more," she pleaded softly, laying her hand on his
forehead.

He lay quite still, almost unable to move. His body was somewhere
d