Page 445 - sons-and-lovers

‘You are sure you want me?’ he asked, as if a cold shadow
had come over him.
‘Yes, quite sure.’
She was very quiet, very calm. She only realised that she
was doing something for him. He could hardly bear it. She
lay to be sacrificed for him because she loved him so much.
And he had to sacrifice her. For a second, he wished he were
sexless or dead. Then he shut his eyes again to her, and his
blood beat back again.
And afterwards he loved her—loved her to the last fi-
bre of his being. He loved her. But he wanted, somehow, to
cry. There was something he could not bear for her sake.
He stayed with her till quite late at night. As he rode home
he felt that he was finally initiated. He was a youth no lon-
ger. But why had he the dull pain in his soul? Why did the
thought of death, the after-life, seem so sweet and consol-
ing?
He spent the week with Miriam, and wore her out with
his passion before it was gone. He had always, almost wilful-
ly, to put her out of count, and act from the brute strength of
his own feelings. And he could not do it often, and there re-
mained afterwards always the sense of failure and of death.
If he were really with her, he had to put aside himself and
his desire. If he would have her, he had to put her aside.
‘When I come to you,’ he asked her, his eyes dark with
pain and shame, ‘you don’t really want me, do you?’
‘Ah, yes!’ she replied quickly.
He looked at her.
‘Nay,’ he said.

Sons and Lovers