Page 239 - sons-and-lovers

walk. Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields. Then
her eyes blazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened
him. But she was physically afraid. If she were getting over a
stile, she gripped his hands in a little hard anguish, and be-
gan to lose her presence of mind. And he could not persuade
her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes dilated, be-
came exposed and palpitating.
‘No!’ she cried, half laughing in terror—‘no!’
‘You shall!’ he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he
brought her falling from the fence. But her wild ‘Ah!’ of pain,
as if she were losing consciousness, cut him. She landed on
her feet safely, and afterwards had courage in this respect.
She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.
‘Don’t you like being at home?’ Paul asked her, sur-
prised.
‘Who would?’ she answered, low and intense. ‘What is it?
I’m all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five
minutes. I don’t WANT to be at home.’
‘What do you want, then?’
‘I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody
else. Why should 1, because I’m a girl, be kept at home and
not allowed to be anything? What chance HAVE I?’
‘Chance of what?’
‘Of knowing anything—of learning, of doing anything.
It’s not fair, because I’m a woman.’
She seemed very bitter. Paul wondered. In his own home
Annie was almost glad to be a girl. She had not so much re-
sponsibility; things were lighter for her. She never wanted to
be other than a girl. But Miriam almost fiercely wished she

Sons and Lovers