She made Clowes read the book, but Clowes found it no help. That was in a story, this was actually happening in London; and besides, the book had a rhapsodic, dreamlike quality that smoothed away all ugliness, all difficulties. In life things were definitely ugly, and it was no good pretending they were anything else.
“Anyhow,” said Morrison, “I’m going on.”
“You are going to see him again?”
“Yes, I will not be beaten. If I were married to him I should put up with everything, and I don’t see why not being married should make any difference.”
Clowes threw up her hands and said:—
“Well, if you come to grief, don’t blame me.”
“I’m not going to come to grief,” said Morrison. “I’m going to win—I’m going to win.”
It was then that she went out and bought the flowers. Her courage nearly failed her as she approached the door in the little slummy street. Suppose he should be angry with her for running away, and contemptuous of her cowardice! His anger and contempt were not easy things to face.
She was relieved, therefore, when the dirty little Jewish servant opened the door and told her Mendel was out. She handed in the flowers shyly and went away without a word.
Mendel wrote to thank her for the flowers, but said nothing about going to see her or about what he was doing. She thought he must be contemptuous of her, though it was not like him to be so stupid as not to respond to a direct impulse. On the other hand, he had always tried to impose his authority on her, and she was not going to do his bidding. Either he must take her on her own level or not at all. She would make him understand that she too was driving at something, and that love was to her not an end in itself, much though she might desire love and its freedom. He had always made her feel that he regarded love as sufficient for her. She must curl up in it and be happy while he went on with his work. Against that all the free instinct in her cried out. A woman was not a mere embryo to be incubated in a man’s passion, hatched out into a wife and a helpmate. . . . When she tried to imagine what life with him would be like, she shivered until she thought what life with him might be if she could bring to it all her force and all her freedom.