Page 447 - sons-and-lovers

‘Twenty-four and twenty-three—-‘
‘Not yet,’ she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress.
‘When you will,’ he said.
She bowed her head gravely. The tone of hopelessness in
which he said these things grieved her deeply. It had always
been a failure between them. Tacitly, she acquiesced in what
he felt.
And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly
one Sunday night, just as they were going to bed:
‘I shan’t go so much to Miriam’s, mother.’
She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.
‘You please yourself,’ she said.
So he went to bed. But there was a new quietness about
him which she had wondered at. She almost guessed. She
would leave him alone, however. Precipitation might spoil
things. She watched him in his loneliness, wondering where
he would end. He was sick, and much too quiet for him.
There was a perpetual little knitting of his brows, such as
she had seen when he was a small baby, and which had been
gone for many years. Now it was the same again. And she
could do nothing for him. He had to go on alone, make his
own way.
He continued faithful to Miriam. For one day he had
loved her utterly. But it never came again. The sense of fail-
ure grew stronger. At first it was only a sadness. Then he
began to feel he could not go on. He wanted to run, to go
abroad, anything. Gradually he ceased to ask her to have
him. Instead of drawing them together, it put them apart.
And then he realised, consciously, that it was no good. It was

Sons and Lovers