Page 299 - sons-and-lovers

His mother watched him growing restless. He could not go
on with his work. He could do nothing. It was as if some-
thing were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then
he put on his hat and went, saying nothing. And his mother
knew he was gone. And as soon as he was on the way he
sighed with relief. And when he was with her he was cruel
again.
One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere,
with Miriam sitting beside him. It was a glistening, white-
and-blue day. Big clouds, so brilliant, went by overhead,
while shadows stole along on the water. The clear spaces in
the sky were of clean, cold blue. Paul lay on his back in the
old grass, looking up. He could not bear to look at Miriam.
She seemed to want him, and he resisted. He resisted all the
time. He wanted now to give her passion and tenderness,
and he could not. He felt that she wanted the soul out of his
body, and not him. All his strength and energy she drew
into herself through some channel which united them. She
did not want to meet him, so that there were two of them,
man and woman together. She wanted to draw all of him
into her. It urged him to an intensity like madness, which
fascinated him, as drug-taking might.
He was discussing Michael Angelo. It felt to her as if she
were fingering the very quivering tissue, the very protoplasm
of life, as she heard him. It gave her deepest satisfaction. And
in the end it frightened her. There he lay in the white inten-
sity of his search, and his voice gradually filled her with fear,
so level it was, almost inhuman, as if in a trance.
‘Don’t talk any more,’ she pleaded softly, laying her hand

Sons and Lovers