Paul fell under Mrs. Leivers’s spell. Everything had a religious and intensified meaning when he was with her. His soul, hurt, highly developed, sought her as if for nourishment. Together they seemed to sift the vital fact from an experience.
Miriam was her mother’s daughter. In the sunshine of the afternoon mother and daughter went down the fields with him. They looked for nests. There was a jenny wren’s in the hedge by the orchard.
“I do want you to see this,” said Mrs. Leivers.
He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the thorns into the round door of the nest.
“It’s almost as if you were feeling inside the live body of the bird,” he said, “it’s so warm. They say a bird makes its nest round like a cup with pressing its breast on it. Then how did it make the ceiling roun
