Page 640 - sons-and-lovers

lay there aloof, careless about her. Suddenly she saw again
his lack of religion, his restless instability. He would destroy
himself like a perverse child. Well, then, he would!
‘I think I must go,’ she said softly.
By her tone he knew she was despising him. He rose qui-
etly.
‘I’ll come along with you,’ he answered.
She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat. How bit-
ter, how unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected her
sacrifice! Life ahead looked dead, as if the glow were gone
out. She bowed her face over the flowers—the freesias so
sweet and spring-like, the scarlet anemones flaunting over
the table. It was like him to have those flowers.
He moved about the room with a certain sureness of
touch, swift and relentless and quiet. She knew she could
not cope with him. He would escape like a weasel out of
her hands. Yet without him her life would trail on lifeless.
Brooding, she touched the flowers.
‘Have them!’ he said; and he took them out of the jar,
dripping as they were, and went quickly into the kitchen.
She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out to-
gether, he talking, she feeling dead.
She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned
against him as they sat on the car. He was unresponsive.
Where would he go? What would be the end of him? She
could not bear it, the vacant feeling where he should be.
He was so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself.
And now where would he go? And what did he care that he
wasted her? He had no religion; it was all for the moment’s