And he had to sacrifice her. For a second, he wished he were sexless or dead. Then he shut his eyes again to her, and his blood beat back again.
And afterwards he loved her—loved her to the last fibre of his being. He loved her. But he wanted, somehow, to cry. There was something he could not bear for her sake. He stayed with her till quite late at night. As he rode home he felt that he was finally initiated. He was a youth no longer. But why had he the dull pain in his soul? Why did the thought of death, the after-life, seem so sweet and consoling?
He spent the week with Miriam, and wore her out with his passion before it was gone. He had always, almost wilfully, to put her out of count, and act from the brute strength of his own feelings. And he could not do it often, and there remained afterwards always the sense of failure and of death. If he were really with her, he had to put aside himself and his desire. If he would have her, he had to put her aside.
“When I come to you,” he asked her, his eyes dark with pain and shame, “you don’t really want me, do you?”
“Ah, yes!” she replied quickly.
He looked at her.
“Nay,” he said.
She began to tremble.
“You see,” she said, taking his face and shutting it out against her shoulder—“you see—as we are—how can I get used to you? It would come all right if we were married.”
He lifted her head and looked at her.
“You mean, now, it is always too much shock?”
“Yes—and——”
“You are always clenched against me.”
She was trembling with agitation.
“You see,” she said, “I’m not used to the thought——”
“You are lately,” he said.
“But all my life. Mother said to me, ‘There is one thing in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to bear it.’ And I believed it.”
“And still believe,” he said.
“No!” she cried hastily. “I believe, as you do, that loving, even in that way, is the high-water mark of living.”
“That doesn’t alter the fact that you never want it.”
“No,” she said, taking his head in her arms and rocking in despair. “Don’t say so! You don’t understand.” She rocked with pain. “Don’t I want your children?”
“But not me.”
