Page 384 - sons-and-lovers

these lads and men was gone. She had forgotten herself in
the game. Now he was to humble her.
‘I think you are despicable!’ she said.
And again he laughed, in a way that tortured Miriam.
‘And I KNEW you couldn’t jump that heap,’ he teased.
She turned her back on him. Yet everybody could see
that the only person she listened to, or was conscious of,
was he, and he of her. It pleased the men to see this battle
between them. But Miriam was tortured.
Paul could choose the lesser in place of the higher, she
saw. He could be unfaithful to himself, unfaithful to the
real, deep Paul Morel. There was a danger of his becom-
ing frivolous, of his running after his satisfaction like any
Arthur, or like his father. It made Miriam bitter to think
that he should throw away his soul for this flippant traffic of
triviality with Clara. She walked in bitterness and silence,
while the other two rallied each other, and Paul sported.
And afterwards, he would not own it, but he was rather
ashamed of himself, and prostrated himself before Miriam.
Then again he rebelled.
‘It’s not religious to be religious,’ he said. ‘I reckon a crow
is religious when it sails across the sky. But it only does it
because it feels itself carried to where it’s going, not because
it thinks it is being eternal.’
But Miriam knew that one should be religious in ev-
erything, have God, whatever God might be, present in
everything.
‘I don’t believe God knows such a lot about Himself,’ he
cried. ‘God doesn’t KNOW things, He IS things. And I’m