`And you?' he asked.
`I need never have been mentioned.'
`I'm sorry,' he said; but he did not sound sorry.
He told himself easily: `She will come round.' And she did.
He told his mother about the fall of Mr Jordan and the trial of Dawes. Mrs Morel watched him closely.
`And what do you think of it all?' she asked him.
`I think he's a fool,' he said.
But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless.
`Have you ever considered where it will end?' his mother said.
`No,' he answered; `things work out of themselves.'
`They do, in a way one doesn't like, as a rule,' said his mother.
`And then one has to put up with them,' he said.
`You'll find you're not as good at "putting up" as you imagine,' she said.
He went on working rapidly at his design.
`Do you ever ask her opinion?' she said at length.
`What of?'
`Of you, and the whole thing.'
`I don't care what her opinion of me is. She's fearfully in love with me, but it's not very deep.'
`But quite as deep as your feeling for her.'
He looked up at his mother curiously.
`Yes,' he said. `You know, mother, I think there must be something the matter with me, that I can't love. When she's there, as a rule, I do love her. Sometimes, when I see her just as the woman, I love her, mother; but then, when she talks and criticizes, I often don't listen to her.'
`Yet she's as much sense as Miriam.'
`Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam. But why don't they hold me?'
The last question was almost a lamentation. His mother turned away her face, sat looking across the room, very quiet, grave, with something of renunciation.
`But you wouldn't want to marry Clara?' she said.
`No; at first perhaps I would. But why -- why don't I want to marry her or anybody? I feel sometimes as if I wronged my women, mother.'
`How wronged them, my son?'