Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

"I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and drank.
Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it made him worse.
He ran down the road. For ever restless, he went here, there,
everywhere. He determined to work. But when he had made six strokes,
he loathed the pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off
to a club where he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he
could flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the brass
pump-handle she drew.
He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet his
own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself. He wanted
to get away from himself, but there was nothing to get hold of.
In despair he thought of Miriam. Perhaps--perhaps---?
Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one Sunday evening,
when they stood up to sing the second hymn he saw her before him.
The light glistened on her lower lip as she sang. She looked
as if she had got something, at any rate: some hope in heaven,
if not in earth. Her comfort and her life seemed in the after-world.