Page 430 - sons-and-lovers

‘It is I who stay,’ he answered.
‘And she lets you? But very well,’ she said.
And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him;
but she lay listening until he came, often long after. It was
a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to Miriam.
She recognised, however, the uselessness of any further in-
terference. He went to Willey Farm as a man now, not as a
youth. She had no right over him. There was a coldness be-
tween him and her. He hardly told her anything. Discarded,
she waited on him, cooked for him still, and loved to slave
for him; but her face closed again like a mask. There was
nothing for her to do now but the housework; for all the rest
he had gone to Miriam. She could not forgive him. Miriam
killed the joy and the warmth in him. He had been such
a jolly lad, and full of the warmest affection; now he grew
colder, more and more irritable and gloomy. It reminded
her of William; but Paul was worse. He did things with
more intensity, and more realisation of what he was about.
His mother knew how he was suffering for want of a wom-
an, and she saw him going to Miriam. If he had made up his
mind, nothing on earth would alter him. Mrs. Morel was
tired. She began to give up at last; she had finished. She was
in the way.
He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what
his mother felt. It only hardened his soul. He made himself
callous towards her; but it was like being callous to his own
health. It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one eve-
ning. He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but