seems,” she said, as they stared over the darkness of the sea, where no light was to be seen—“it seemed as if you only loved me at night—as if you didn't love me in the daytime.”
He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty under the accusation.
“The night is free to you,” he replied. “In the daytime I want to be by myself.”
“But why?” she said. “Why, even now, when we are on this short holiday?”
“I don't know. Love-making stifles me in the daytime.”
“But it needn't be always love-making,” she said.
“It always is,” he answered, “when you and I are together.”
She sat feeling very bitter.
“Do you ever want to marry me?” he asked curiously.
“Do you me?” she replied.
“Yes, yes; I should like us to have children,” he answered slowly.
She sat with her head bent, fingering the sand.
“But you don't really want a divorce from Baxter, do you?” he said.
It was some minutes before she replied.
“No,” she said, very deliberately; “I don't think I do.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you feel as if you belonged to him?”
“No; I don't think so.”
“What, then?”
“I think he belongs to me,” she replied.
He was silent for some minutes, listening to the wind blowing over the hoarse, dark sea.
“And you never really intended to belong to ME?” he said.
“Yes, I do belong to you,” she answered.
“No,” he said; “because you don't want to be divorced.”
It was a knot they could not untie, so they left it, took what they could get, and what they could not attain they ignored.
“I consider you treated Baxter rottenly,” he said another time.
He half-expected Clara to answer him, as his mother would: “You consider your own affairs, and don't know so much about other people's.” But she took him seriously, almost to his own surprise.
“Why?” she said.
“I suppose you thought he was a lily of the valley, and so you put him in an appropriate pot, and tended him according. You made up your mind he was a lily of the valley and it was no good his being a cow-parsnip. You wouldn't have it.”
“I certainly never imagined him a lily of the valley.”
“You imagined him something he wasn't. That's just what a woman is. She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and she's going to see he gets it; and no matter if he's starving, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while she's got him, and is giving him what's good for him.”
“And what are you doing?” she asked.
“I'm thinking what tune I shall whistle,” he laughed.
And instead of boxing his ears, she considered him in earnest.
“You think I want to give you what's good for you?” she asked.
“I hope so; but love should give a sense of freedom, not of prison. Miriam made me feel tied up like a donkey to a stake. I must feed on her patch, and nowhere else. It's sickening!”
“And would YOU let a WOMAN do as she likes?”
“Yes; I'll see that she likes to love me. If she doesn't—well, I don't hold her.”
“If you were as wonderful as you say—,” replied Clara.
“I should be the marvel I am,” he laughed.
There was a silence in which they hated each other, though they laughed.
“Love's a dog in a manger,” he said.
“And which of us is the dog?” she asked.
“Oh well, you, of course.”
So there went on a battle between them. She knew she never fully had him. Some part, big and vital in him, she had no hold over; nor did she ever try to get it, or even to realise what it was. And he knew in some way that she held herself still as Mrs. Dawes. She did not love Dawes, never had loved him; but she believed he loved her, at least depended on her. She felt a certain surety about him that she never felt with Paul Morel. Her passion for the young man had filled her soul, given her a certain satisfaction, eased her of her self-mistrust, her doubt. Whatever else she was, she was inwardly assured. It was almost as if she had gained HERSELF, and stood now distinct and complete. She had received her confirmation; but she never believed that her life belonged to Paul Morel, nor his to her. They would separate in the end, and the rest of her life would be an ache after him. But at any rate, she knew now, she was sure of herself. And the same could almost be said of him. Together they had received the baptism of life, each through the other; 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 something 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 suddenly 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 unnoticed past every person he met, glancing suspiciously to see what they thought of him. And his hands seemed to be wanting to hide. He wore old clothes, the trousers were torn at the knee, and the handkerchief tied round his throat was dirty; but his cap was still defiantly over one eye. As she saw him, Clara felt guilty. There was a tiredness and despair on his face that made her hate him, because it hurt her.
