Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/236

224 He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them in the palm of his hand.

“They are quite hot—I think we frightened her off them,” he said.

“Ay, poor thing!” said Mrs. Leivers.

Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which, it seemed to her, cradled them so well.

“Isn’t it a strange warmth!” she murmured, to get near him.

“Blood heat,” he answered.

She watched him putting them back, his body pressed against the hedge, his arm reaching slowly through the thorns, his hand folded carefully over the eggs. He was concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved him; he seemed so simple and sufficient to himself. And she could not get to him.

After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf. He took “Tartarin de Tarascon.” Again they sat on the bank of hay at the foot of the stack. He read a couple of pages, but without any heart for it. Again the dog came racing up to repeat the fun of the other day. He shoved his muzzle in the man’s chest. Paul fingered his ear for a moment. Then he pushed him away.

“Go away, Bill,” he said. “I don’t want you.”

Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded what was coming. There was a silence about the youth that made her still with apprehension. It was not his furies, but his quiet resolutions that she feared.

Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could not see him, he began, speaking slowly and painfully:

“Do you think—if I didn’t come up so much—you might get to like somebody else—another man?”

So this was what he was still harping on.

“But I don’t know any other men. Why do you ask?” she replied, in a low tone that should have been a reproach to him.

“Why,” he blurted, “because they say I’ve no right to come up like this—without we mean to marry——”

Miriam was indignant at anybody’s forcing the issues between them. She had been furious with her own father for suggesting to Paul, laughingly, that he knew why he came so much.

“Who says?” she asked, wondering if her people had anything to do with it. They had not.

“Mother—and the others. They say at this rate everybody will consider me engaged, and I ought to consider