She only realised that she was doing
something for him. He could hardly bear it. She lay to be sacrificed for
him because she loved him so much. 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.
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