Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

painting he had brought to show her. Miriam glanced at the two,
and avoided their levity. She went into the parlour to be alone.
It was tea-time before she was able to speak to Paul, and then
her manner was so distant he thought he had offended her.
Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thursday evening
to the library in Bestwood. After calling for Paul regularly
during the whole spring, a number of trifling incidents and tiny
insults from his family awakened her to their attitude towards her,
and she decided to go no more. So she announced to Paul one evening
she would not call at his house again for him on Thursday nights.
"Why?" he asked, very short.
"Nothing. Only I'd rather not."
"Very well."
"But," she faltered, "if you'd care to meet me, we could still
go together."
"Meet you where?"
"Somewhere--where you like."
"I shan't meet you anywhere. I don't see why you shouldn't
keep calling for me. But if you won't, I don't want to meet you."
So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious to her,
and to him, were dropped. He worked instead. Mrs. Morel sniffed
with satisfaction at this arrangement.
He would not have it that they were lovers. The intimacy
between them had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the soul,
all thought and weary struggle into consciousness, that he saw it only
as a platonic friendship. He stoutly denied there was anything else
between them. Miriam was silent, or else she very quietly agreed.
He was a fool who did not know what was happening to himself.
By tacit agreement they ignored the remarks and insinuations of
their acquaintances.
"We aren't lovers, we are friends," he said to her. "WE know it.
Let them talk. What does it matter what they say."
Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her arm
timidly into his. But he always resented it, and she knew it.