nk across the room. Then he got up suddenly and hurried out to
the Three Spots, returning in his normal state. But never in his life
would he go for a walk up Shepstone, past the office where his son had
worked, and he always avoided the cemetery.

PART TWO

CHAPTER VII

LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE

PAUL had been many times up to Willey Farm during the autumn. He
was friends with the two youngest boys. Edgar the eldest, would not
condescend at first. And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was
afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was
romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being
loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was
something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination.
And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something
like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew
what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might
consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess
beneath; so she held aloof.

Her great companion was her mother. They were both brown-eyed, and
inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religion inside them,
breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist
thereof. So to Miriam, Christ and God made one great figure, which she
loved tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunset burned
out the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de Bois
Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the sunny leaves in the
morning, or sat in her bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. That was
life to her. For the rest, she drudged in the house, which work she
would not have minded had not her clean red floor been mucked up
immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. She madly
wanted her little brother of four to let her swathe him and stifle
him in her love; she went to church reverently, with bowed head, and
quivered in anguish from the vulgarity of the other choir-girls and from
the common-sounding voice of the curate; she fought with her brothers,
whom she considered brutal louts; and she held not her father in too
high esteem because he did not carry any mystical ideals cherished in
his heart, but only wanted to have as easy a time as he could, and his
meals when he was ready for them.

She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be considered. She
wanted to lear