find it in the pantry this night. This insulted her.

"If I WANTED you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can imagine the
scene," said Mrs. Morel. "But you're never too tired to go if SHE will
come for you. Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink then."

"I can't let her go alone."

"Can't you? And why does she come?"

"Not because I ask her."

"She doesn't come without you want her--"

"Well, what if I DO want her--" he replied.

"Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable. But to go trapseing up
there miles and miles in the mud, coming home at midnight, and got to go
to Nottingham in the morning--"

"If I hadn't, you'd be just the same."

"Yes, I should, because there's no sense in it. Is she so fascinating
that you must follow her all that way?" Mrs. Morel was bitterly
sarcastic. She sat still, with averted face, stroking with a rhythmic,
jerked movement, the black sateen of her apron. It was a movement that
hurt Paul to see.

"I do like her," he said, "but--"

"LIKE her!" said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones. "It seems to me
you like nothing and nobody else. There's neither Annie, nor me, nor
anyone now for you."

"What nonsense, mother--you know I don't love her--I--I tell you I DON'T
love her--she doesn't even walk with my arm, because I don't want her
to."

"Then why do you fly to her so often?"

"I DO like to talk to her--I never said I didn't. But I DON'T love her."

"Is there nobody else to talk to?"

"Not about the things we talk of. There's a lot of things that you're
not interested in, that--"

"What things?"

Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.

"Why--painting--and books. YOU don't care about Herbert Spencer."

"No," was the sad reply. "And YOU won't at my age."

"Well, but I do now--and Miriam does--"

"And how do you know," Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, "that I shouldn't.
Do you ever try me!"

"But you don't, mother, you know you don't care whether a picture's
decorative or not; you don't care what MANNER it is in."

"How do you know I don't care? Do you ever try me? Do you ever talk to
me about these things, to try?"

"But it's not that that matters to you, mother, you know t's not."

"What is it, then--what is it, then, that matters to me?" she flashed.
He knitted his brows with pain.

"You're old, mother, and we're young."

He only meant that the interests of HER age were not the interests of
his. But he realised the moment he had spoken that