Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/320

308 and the green meadow-banks, and the elm-trees that were spangled with gold. The river slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift, intertwining among itself like some subtle, complex creature. Clara walked moodily beside him.

“Why,” she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, “did you leave Miriam?”

He frowned.

“Because I wanted to leave her,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to go on with her. And I didn’t want to marry.”

She was silent for a moment. They picked their way down the muddy path. Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.

“You didn’t want to marry Miriam, or you didn’t want to marry at all?” she asked.

“Both,” he answered—“both!”

They had to manœuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools of water.

“And what did she say?” Clara asked.

“Miriam? She said I was a baby of four, and that I always had battled her off.”

Clara pondered over this for a time.

“But you have really been going with her for some time?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And now you don’t want any more of her?”

“No. I know it’s no good.”

She pondered again.

“Don’t you think you’ve treated her rather badly?” she asked.

“Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back. But it would have been no good going on. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“How old are you?” Clara asked.

“Twenty-five.”

“And I am thirty,” she said.

“I know you are.”

“I shall be thirty-one—or am I thirty-one?”

“I neither know nor care. What does it matter it!”

They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red track, already sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep bank between the grass. On either side stood the elms-trees like pillars along a great aisle, arching over and making high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell. All was empty