st bliss.

When she went downstairs Paul was lying back in an armchair, holding
forth with much vehemence to Agatha, who was scorning a little painting
he had brought to show her. Miriam glanced at the two, and avoided their
levity. She went into the parlour to be alone.

It was tea-time before she was able to speak to Paul, and then her
manner was so distant he thought he had offended her.

Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thursday evening to the
library in Bestwood. After calling for Paul regularly during the whole
spring, a number of trifling incidents and tiny insults from his family
awakened her to their attitude towards her, and she decided to go no
more. So she announced to Paul one evening she would not call at his
house again for him on Thursday nights.

"Why?" he asked, very short.

"Nothing. Only I'd rather not."

"Very well."

"But," she faltered, "if you'd care to meet me, we could still go
together."

"Meet you where?"

"Somewhere--where you like."

"I shan't meet you anywhere. I don't see why you shouldn't keep calling
for me. But if you won't, I don't want to meet you."

So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious to her, and to him,
were dropped. He worked instead. Mrs. Morel sniffed with satisfaction at
this arrangement.

He would not have it that they were lovers. The intimacy between them
had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the soul, all thought and
weary struggle into consciousness, that he saw it only as a platonic
friendship. He stoutly denied there was anything else between them.
Miriam was silent, or else she very quietly agreed. He was a fool who
did not know what was happening to himself. By tacit agreement they
ignored the remarks and insinuations of their acquaintances.

"We aren't lovers, we are friends," he said to her. "WE know it. Let
them talk. What does it matter what they say."

Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her arm timidly
into his. But he always resented it, and she knew it. It caused a
violent conflict in him. With Miriam he was always on the high plane of
abstraction, when his natural fire of love was transmitted into the fine
stream of thought. She would have it so. If he were jolly and, as she
put it, flippant, she waited till he came back to her, till the change
had taken place in him again, and he was wrestling with his own soul,
frowning, passionate in his desire for understanding. And in this
passion fo