Page 553 - sons-and-lovers

but now their missions were separate. Where he wanted to
go she could not come with him. They would have to part
sooner or later. Even if they married, and were faithful to
each other, still he would have to leave her, go on alone, and
she would only have to attend to him when he came home.
But it was not possible. Each wanted a mate to go side by
side with.
Clara had gone to live with her mother upon Mapperley
Plains. One evening, as Paul and she were walking along
Woodborough Road, they met Dawes. Morel knew some-
thing about the bearing of the man approaching, but he was
absorbed in his thinking at the moment, so that only his
artist’s eye watched the form of the stranger. Then he sud-
denly turned to Clara with a laugh, and put his hand on her
shoulder, saying, laughing:
‘But we walk side by side, and yet I’m in London arguing
with an imaginary Orpen; and where are you?’
At that instant Dawes passed, almost touching Morel.
The young man glanced, saw the dark brown eyes burning,
full of hate and yet tired.
‘Who was that?’ he asked of Clara.
‘It was Baxter,’ she replied.
Paul took his hand from her shoulder and glanced round;
then he saw again distinctly the man’s form as it approached
him. Dawes still walked erect, with his fine shoulders flung
back, and his face lifted; but there was a furtive look in his
eyes that gave one the impression he was trying to get un-
noticed past every person he met, glancing suspiciously to
see what they thought of him. And his hands seemed to be

Sons and Lovers