Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/374

362 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 the 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 realize 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