Page 432 - sons-and-lovers

‘I love you an awful lot—then there is something short.’
‘Where?’ she answered, looking at him.
‘Oh, in me! It is I who ought to be ashamed—like a spiri-
tual cripple. And I am ashamed. It is misery. Why is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Miriam.
‘And I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t you think we have
been too fierce in our what they call purity? Don’t you think
that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of dirtiness?’
She looked at him with startled dark eyes.
‘You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took
the motion from you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse.’
There was silence in the room for some time.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is so.’
‘There is between us,’ he said, ‘all these years of intimacy.
I feel naked enough before you. Do you understand?’
‘I think so,’ she answered.
‘And you love me?’
She laughed.
‘Don’t be bitter,’ he pleaded.
She looked at him and was sorry for him; his eyes were
dark with torture. She was sorry for him; it was worse for
him to have this deflated love than for herself, who could
never be properly mated. He was restless, for ever urging
forward and trying to find a way out. He might do as he
liked, and have what he liked of her.
‘Nay,’ she said softly, ‘I am not bitter.’
She felt she could bear anything for him; she would suffer
for him. She put her hand on his knee as he leaned forward
in his chair. He took it and kissed it; but it hurt to do so. He

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