ll, Paul, my lad," said the friend, "you'll have to take care of
yourself now for a while."

"You won't have to give him a chance over you, that's all," said the
barmaid.

"Can you box?" asked a friend.

"Not a bit," he answered, still very white.

"I might give you a turn or two," said the friend.

"Thanks, I haven't time."

And presently he took his departure.

"Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson," whispered the barmaid, tipping Mr.
Jenkinson the wink.

The man nodded, took his hat, said: "Good-night all!" very heartily, and
followed Paul, calling:

"Half a minute, old man. You an' me's going the same road, I believe."

"Mr. Morel doesn't like it," said the barmaid. "You'll see, we shan't
have him in much more. I'm sorry; he's good company. And Baxter Dawes
wants locking up, that's what he wants."

Paul would have died rather than his mother should get to know of this
affair. He suffered tortures of humiliation and self-consciousness.
There was now a good deal of his life of which necessarily he could not
speak to his mother. He had a life apart from her--his sexual life. The
rest she still kept. But he felt he had to conceal something from her,
and it irked him. There was a certain silence between them, and he
felt he had, in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt
condemned by her. Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her
bondage. His life wanted to free itself of her. It was like a circle
where life turned back on itself, and got no farther. She bore him,
loved him, kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he could
not be free to go forward with his own life, really love another woman.
At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother's influence. He did
not tell her things; there was a distance between them.

Clara was happy, almost sure of him. She felt she had at last got him
for herself; and then again came the uncertainty. He told her jestingly
of the affair with her husband. Her colour came up, her grey eyes
flashed.

"That's him to a 'T'," she cried--"like a navvy! He's not fit for mixing
with decent folk."

"Yet you married him," he said.

It made her furious that he reminded her.

"I did!" she cried. "But how was I to know?"

"I think he might have been rather nice," he said.

"You think I made him what he is!" she exclaimed.

"Oh no! he made himself. But there's something about him--"

Clara looked at her lover closely. There was something in him sh