t. You know I said so long ago."

"I can't help that now. I shall break off on Sunday."

"Well," said his mother, "I think it will be best. But lately I decided
you had made up your mind to have her, so I said nothing, and should
have said nothing. But I say as I have always said, I DON'T think she is
suited to you."

"On Sunday I break off," he said, smelling the pink. He put the flower
in his mouth. Unthinking, he bared his teeth, closed them on the blossom
slowly, and had a mouthful of petals. These he spat into the fire,
kissed his mother, and went to bed.

On Sunday he went up to the farm in the early afternoon. He had written
Miriam that they would walk over the fields to Hucknall. His mother was
very tender with him. He said nothing. But she saw the effort it was
costing. The peculiar set look on his face stilled her.

"Never mind, my son," she said. "You will be so much better when it is
all over."

Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. He did
not want sympathy.

Miriam met him at the lane-end. She was wearing a new dress of figured
muslin that had short sleeves. Those short sleeves, and Miriam's
brown-skinned arms beneath them--such pitiful, resigned arms--gave him
so much pain that they helped to make him cruel. She had made herself
look so beautiful and fresh for him. She seemed to blossom for him
alone. Every time he looked at her--a mature young woman now, and
beautiful in her new dress--it hurt so much that his heart seemed almost
to be bursting with the restraint he put on it. But he had decided, and
it was irrevocable.

On the hills they sat down, and he lay with his head in her lap, whilst
she fingered his hair. She knew that "he was not there," as she put it.
Often, when she had him with her, she looked for him, and could not find
him. But this afternoon she was not prepared.

It was nearly five o'clock when he told her. They were sitting on the
bank of a stream, where the lip of turf hung over a hollow bank of
yellow earth, and he was hacking away with a stick, as he did when he
was perturbed and cruel.

"I have been thinking," he said, "we ought to break off."

"Why?" she cried in surprise.

"Because it's no good going on."

"Why is it no good?"

"It isn't. I don't want to marry. I don't want ever to marry. And if
we're not going to marry, it's no good going on."

"But why do you say this now?"

"Because I've made up my mind."

"And what about these las