Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/200

188 was warm on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a devotee.

“What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?” she asked quietly.

“She doesn’t look very amiable,” he replied.

“No, but don’t you think she’s a fine woman?” she said, in a deep tone.

“Yes in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her for some things. Is she disagreeable?”

“I don’t think so. I think she’s dissatisfied.”

“What with?”

“Well how would you like to be tied for life to a man like that?”

“Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have revulsions so soon?”

“Ay, why did she!” repeated Miriam bitterly.

“And I should have thought she had enough fight in her to match him,” he said.

Miriam bowed her head.

“Ay?” she queried satirically. “What makes you think so?”

“Look at her mouth made for passion and the very set-back of her throat——” He threw his head back in Clara’s defiant manner.

Miriam bowed a little lower.

“Yes,” she said.

There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of Clara.

“And what were the things you liked about her?” she asked.

“I don’t know—her skin and the texture of her—and her—I don’t know—there’s a sort of fierceness somewhere in her. I appreciate her as an artist, that’s all.”

“Yes.”

He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that strange way. It irritated him.

“You don’t really like her, do you?” he asked the girl.

She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes.

“I do,” she said.

“You don’t—you can’t—not really.”

“Then what?” she asked slowly.

“Eh, I don’t know—perhaps you like her because she’s got a grudge against men.”

That was more probably one of his own reasons for liking