Page 238 - sons-and-lovers

if she were swooned in an ecstasy of love.
‘Don’t!’ repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.
‘You love me, don’t you?’ she murmured.
‘What do you make such a FUSS for?’ cried Paul, all in
suffering because of her extreme emotion. ‘Why can’t you
be ordinary with him?’
She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing. Her in-
tensity, which would leave no emotion on a normal plane,
irritated the youth into a frenzy. And this fearful, naked
contact of her on small occasions shocked him. He was
used to his mother’s reserve. And on such occasions he was
thankful in his heart and soul that he had his mother, so
sane and wholesome.
All the life of Miriam’s body was in her eyes, which were
usually dark as a dark church, but could flame with light
like a conflagration. Her face scarcely ever altered from its
look of brooding. She might have been one of the women
who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body was
not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather
heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not
clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quite THE
movement. Often, when wiping the dishes, she would stand
in bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled in two
halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and self-
mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort. There
was no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was
gripped stiff with intensity, and her effort, overcharged,
closed in on itself.
She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense