Page 537 - sons-and-lovers

‘Yet she’s as much sense as Miriam.’
‘Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam. But WHY
don’t they hold me?’
The last question was almost a lamentation. His mother
turned away her face, sat looking across the room, very qui-
et, grave, with something of renunciation.
‘But you wouldn’t want to marry Clara?’ she said.
‘No; at first perhaps I would. But why—why don’t I want
to marry her or anybody? I feel sometimes as if I wronged
my women, mother.’
‘How wronged them, my son?’
‘I don’t know.’
He went on painting rather despairingly; he had touched
the quick of the trouble.
‘And as for wanting to marry,’ said his mother, ‘there’s
plenty of time yet.’
‘But no, mother. I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but
to GIVE myself to them in marriage I couldn’t. I couldn’t
belong to them. They seem to want ME, and I can’t ever
give it them.’
‘You haven’t met the right woman.’
‘And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,’
he said.
She was very quiet. Now she began to feel again tired, as
if she were done.
‘We’ll see, my son,’ she answered.
The feeling that things were going in a circle made him
mad.
Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he

Sons and Lovers