re his blood battling with her? If
only he could have been always gentle, tender with her, breathing with
her the atmosphere of reverie and religious dreams, he would give
his right hand. It was not fair to hurt her. There seemed an eternal
maidenhood about her; and when he thought of her mother, he saw the
great brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared and shocked out of
her virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in spite of her seven children.
They had been born almost leaving her out of count, not of her, but upon
her. So she could never let them go, because she never had possessed
them.

Mrs. Morel saw him going again frequently to Miriam, and was astonished.
He said nothing to his mother. He did not explain nor excuse himself. If
he came home late, and she reproached him, he frowned and turned on her
in an overbearing way:

"I shall come home when I like," he said; "I am old enough."

"Must she keep you till this time?"

"It is I who stay," he answered.

"And she lets you? But very well," she said.

And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him; but she lay
listening until he came, often long after. It was a great bitterness
to her that he had gone back to Miriam. She recognised, however, the
uselessness of any further interference. He went to Willey Farm as a
man now, not as a youth. She had no right over him. There was a coldness
between him and her. He hardly told her anything. Discarded, she waited
on him, cooked for him still, and loved to slave for him; but her face
closed again like a mask. There was nothing for her to do now but the
housework; for all the rest he had gone to Miriam. She could not forgive
him. Miriam killed the joy and the warmth in him. He had been such a
jolly lad, and full of the warmest affection; now he grew colder, more
and more irritable and gloomy. It reminded her of William; but Paul was
worse. He did things with more intensity, and more realisation of what
he was about. His mother knew how he was suffering for want of a woman,
and she saw him going to Miriam. If he had made up his mind, nothing
on earth would alter him. Mrs. Morel was tired. She began to give up at
last; she had finished. She was in the way.

He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what his mother felt.
It only hardened his soul. He made himself callous towards her; but it
was like being callous to his own health. It undermined him quickly; yet
he persisted.

He lay back in the rocking-c