Page 266 - sons-and-lovers

armchair, holding forth with much vehemence to Agatha,
who was scorning a little painting he had brought to show
her. Miriam glanced at the two, and avoided their levity.
She went into the parlour to be alone.
It was tea-time before she was able to speak to Paul, and
then her manner was so distant he thought he had offended
her.
Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thurs-
day evening to the library in Bestwood. After calling for
Paul regularly during the whole spring, a number of trifling
incidents and tiny insults from his family awakened her to
their attitude towards her, and she decided to go no more.
So she announced to Paul one evening she would not call at
his house again for him on Thursday nights.
‘Why?’ he asked, very short.
‘Nothing. Only I’d rather not.’
‘Very well.’
‘But,’ she faltered, ‘if you’d care to meet me, we could still
go together.’
‘Meet you where?’
‘Somewhere—where you like.’
‘I shan’t meet you anywhere. I don’t see why you shouldn’t
keep calling for me. But if you won’t, I don’t want to meet
you.’
So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious
to her, and to him, were dropped. He worked instead. Mrs.
Morel sniffed with satisfaction at this arrangement.
He would not have it that they were lovers. The intima-
cy between them had been kept so abstract, such a matter