damned  to  the  artificial
sex-compulsion! I refuse it!'
     Connie knew he was right, really.  Yet it left her  feeling so forlorn,
so forlorn  and stray. Like a  chip on a dreary pond, she felt. What was the
point, of her or anything?
     It was her  youth  which  rebelled.  These men seemed so old  and cold.
Everything  seemed old and cold. And Michaelis let one  down so; he  was  no
good. The  men  didn't want one; they just didn't really  want a woman, even
Michaelis didn't.
     And the  bounders who pretended they did,  and  started working the sex
game, they were worse than ever.
     It was just dismal, and one had to  put up with it. It was quite  true,
men  had  no  real glamour  for  a  woman: if  you  could fool yourself into
thinking they had, even  as she  had fooled herself over Michaelis, that was
the best you could do. Meanwhile you just lived on and there was  nothing to
it.  She understood  perfectly well  why  people had  cocktail  parties, and
jazzed,  and Charlestoned till they were ready to  drop. You had to  take it
out  some  way or  other, your youth,  or it ate you up. But what a  ghastly
thing,  this youth! You felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the  thing fizzed
somehow,  and  didn't  let you be comfortable. A mean  sort of life!  And no
prospect! She almost wished  she had gone off with Mick, and made  her  life
one long cocktail  party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just
mooning yourself into the grave.
     On one of  her  bad days  she  went out  alone  to  walk  in the  wood,
ponderously, heeding nothing, not even noticing where she was. The report of
a gun not far off startled and angered her.
     Then, as  she went, she heard voices, and recoiled.  People! She didn't
want people.  But her quick ear caught another sound, and she roused; it was
a child sobbing. At once she attended; someone was ill-treating a child. She
strode swinging down the  wet drive, her  sullen resentment  uppermost.  She
felt just prepared to make a scene.
     Turning the corner, she saw two  figures  in  the drive beyond her: the
keeper, and a little girl in a purple coat and moleskin cap, crying.
     `Ah,  shut it up, tha false little bitch!' came the  man's angry voice,
and the child sobbed louder.
     Constance  strode nearer, with blazing eyes. The man turned  and looked
at her, saluting coolly, but he was pale with anger.
     `What's the matter? Why is she crying?'  demanded Constance, peremptory
but a little breathless.
     A  faint smile like a sneer came on  the man's face.  `Nay,  yo mun  ax
'er,' he replied callously, in broad vernacular.
     Connie  felt as if he had hit her in the  face, and she changed colour.
Then  she  gathered  her defiance, and  looked at  him, her dark  blue  eyes
blazing rather vaguely.
     `I asked you,' she panted.
     He gave a queer  little bow, lifting his hat. `You did, your Ladyship,'
he said; then, with a  return to the vernacular: `but I canna tell yer.' And
he became a soldier, inscrutable, only pale with annoyance.
     Connie turned to the child, a ruddy, black-haired thing of nine or ten.
`What  is it,  dear?  Tell  me  why  you're  crying!'  she  said,  with  the
conventionalized  sweetness suitable.  More  violent  sobs,  self-conscious.
Still more sweetness on Connie's part.
     `There,  there, don't you cry! Tell me what  they've done to you!'...an
intense tenderness of tone. At the  same time she felt  in the pocket of her
knitted jacket, and luckily found a sixpence.
     `Don't you cry then!'  she said,  bending in front of the  child.  `See
what I've got for you!'
     Sobs, snuffles, a fist  taken from a blubbered face, and a black shrewd
eye cast for a second on the sixpence. Then more sobs, but subduing. `There,
tell me what's  the matter, tell me!' said Connie, putting the coin into the
child's chubby hand, which closed over it.
     `It's the...it's the...pussy!'
     Shudders of subsiding sobs.
     `What pussy, dear?'
     After a silence the shy fist, clenching on sixpence, pointed  into  the
bramble brake.
     `There!'
     Connie looked, and there, sure enough, was  a big black cat,  stretched
out grimly, with a bit of blood on it.
     `Oh!' she said in repulsion.
     `A poacher, your Ladyship,' said the man satirically.
     She glanced at him angrily. `No wonder the child  cried,' she said, `if
you shot it when she was there. No wonder she cried!'
     He looked  into Connie's  eyes, laconic,  contemptuous,  not hiding his
feelings. And again Connie flushed; she  felt she had been  making  a scene,
the man did not respect her.
     `What  is your name?' she said playfully to the child. `Won't you  tell
me your name?'
     Sniffs; then very affectedly in a piping voice: `Connie Mellors!'
     `Connie Mellors! Well, that's  a nice  name! And did you  come out with
your Daddy, and he shot a pussy? But it was a bad pussy!'
     The child looked at her, with bold, dark eyes of  scrutiny, sizing  her
up, and her condolence.
     `I wanted to stop with my Gran,' said the little girl.
     `Did you? But where is your Gran?'
     The child lifted an arm, pointing down the drive. `At th' cottidge.'
     `At the cottage! And would you like to go back to her?'
     Sudden, shuddering quivers of reminiscent sobs. `Yes!'
     `Come then, shall I take you? Shall I take  you to your Gran? Then your
Daddy can do what  he has to do.' She  turned to the man. `It is your little
girl, isn't it?'
     He saluted, and made a slight movement of the head in affirmation.
     `I suppose I can take her to the cottage?' asked Connie.
     `If your Ladyship wishes.'
     Again  he  looked into her  eyes,  with  that  calm, searching detached
glance. A man very much alone, and on his own.
     `Would you like to come with me to the cottage, to your Gran, dear?'
     The child peeped up again. `Yes!' she simpered.
     Connie disliked her; the spoilt, false little  female. Nevertheless she
wiped her face and took her hand. The keeper saluted in silence.
     `Good morning!' said Connie.
     It was nearly  a mile to the cottage, and Connie senior was well red by
Connie  junior by the  time the game-keeper's picturesque little home was in
sight.  The child  was already as  full to  the brim with tricks as a little
monkey, and so self-assured.
     At  the  cottage the  door stood open, and  there was a  rattling heard
inside. Connie lingered, the child slipped her hand, and ran indoors.
     `Gran! Gran!'
     `Why, are yer back a'ready!'
     The  grandmother  had  been  blackleading  the  stove, it was  Saturday
morning. She came to the door in her sacking apron, a blacklead-brush in her
hand, and a black smudge on her nose. She was a little, rather dry woman.
     `Why,  whatever?' she said, hastily wiping her  arm across  her face as
she saw Connie standing outside.
     `Good morning!'  said Connie.  `She  was crying, so I just  brought her
home.'
     The grandmother looked around swiftly at the child:
     `Why, wheer was yer Dad?'
     The little girl clung to her grandmother's skirts and simpered.
     `He  was there,' said Connie, `but  he'd  shot a  poaching cat, and the
child was upset.'
     `Oh, you'd no right t'ave bothered, Lady Chatterley, I'm sure! I'm sure
it  was very good of you, but you shouldn't 'ave bothered. Why, did ever you
see!'---and the old woman turned to the child: `Fancy Lady Chatterley takin'
all that trouble over yer! Why, she shouldn't 'ave bothered!'
     `It was no bother, just a walk,' said Connie smiling.
     `Why, I'm sure 'twas very kind of you, I must say! So she was crying! I
knew  there'd be  something  afore they got  far. She's  frightened of  'im,
that's wheer it is.  Seems  'e's almost a stranger to 'er,  fair a stranger,
and I don't think  they're  two as'd  hit  it  off very easy. He's got funny
ways.'
     Connie didn't know what to say.
     `Look, Gran!' simpered the child.
     The old woman looked down at the sixpence in the little girl's hand.
     `An' sixpence an' all! Oh, your Ladyship, you shouldn't, you shouldn't.
Why, isn't  Lady Chatterley good to  yer! My word, you're  a lucky girl this
morning!'
     She pronounced the name, as all the people  did: Chat'ley.---Isn't Lady
Chat'ley good to you!'---Connie  couldn't  help looking  at the old  woman's
nose,  and the  latter  again vaguely  wiped her face  with the back  of her
wrist, but missed the smudge.
     Connie was  moving away `Well, thank you  ever so much, Lady  Chat'ley,
I'm sure. Say thank you to Lady Chat'ley!'---this last to the child.
     `Thank you,' piped the child.
     `There's a  dear!' laughed Connie,  and she moved  away,  saying  `Good
morning', heartily relieved to get away from the contact.
     Curious,  she  thought, that  that  thin, proud man  should  have  that
little, sharp woman for a mother!
     And the old woman,  as soon  as Connie had gone,  rushed to the  bit of
mirror in  the scullery, and looked at her face. Seeing it, she stamped  her
foot with impatience. `Of course she had to catch me in my coarse apron, and
a dirty face! Nice idea she'd get of me!'
     Connie went slowly home to  Wragby. `Home!'...it was a warm word to use
for that great, weary  warren. But then it was a word that  had had its day.
It was  somehow cancelled. All  the  great words, it seemed to Connie,  were
cancelled  for her generation:  love,  joy, happiness, home, mother, father,
husband, all these great, dynamic words were  half dead now, and  dying from
day to day. Home was a place  you lived in, love was a thing you didn't fool
yourself about, joy was a  word  you applied to a good Charleston, happiness
was  a  term  of  hypocrisy  used to  bluff other  people,  a father was  an
individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was a man you lived with
and kept going  in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great words, it  was
just a cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you up for a  while, then
left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It  was as  if the  very material you
were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to nothing.
     All that really remained was a stubborn stoicism: and in that there was
a certain pleasure. In the very experience of the nothingness of life, phase
after phase, čtape after čtape, there was  a certain grisly satisfaction. So
that's  that! Always  this was  the  last  utterance: home,  love, marriage,
Michaelis: So that's that! And when one died, the last  words to life  would
be: So that's that!
     Money?  Perhaps  one  couldn't  say the same there.  Money  one  always
wanted.  Money,  Success,  the  bitch-goddess, as  Tommy  Dukes persisted in
calling it, after Henry James, that was  a permanent necessity. You couldn't
spend your last sou, and say finally: So that's that! No, if you lived  even
another ten minutes, you wanted a few more sous for something or other. Just
to keep the business mechanically going, you  needed money. You had to  have
it. Money you have to have. You needn't really have anything else. So that's
that!
     Since, of course, it's  not  your own fault you are alive. Once you are
alive, money is a necessity, and the  only  absolute necessity. All the rest
you  can get along without, at a pinch. But not money.  Emphatically, that's
that!
     She  thought of Michaelis, and the  money she might have had with  him;
and  even that she  didn't  want. She preferred the lesser  amount which she
helped  Clifford  to make  by  his  writing. That  she  actually  helped  to
make.---`Clifford and I  together,  we make twelve  hundred  a year  out  of
writing';  so she  put  it to herself. Make money! Make it!  Out of nowhere.
Wring it out of the thin air! The last feat to be humanly proud of! The rest
all-my-eye-Betty-Martin.
     So she plodded home to Clifford, to join forces with him again, to make
another story out of nothingness: and a  story meant  money. Clifford seemed
to care very much whether his stories were considered first-class literature
or not. Strictly, she didn't care. Nothing  in it! said  her  father. Twelve
hundred pounds last year! was the retort simple and final.
     If  you were young, you just set your  teeth,  and bit on and held  on,
till the money began to flow from the invisible; it was a question of power.
It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle,  powerful emanation of will out
of yourself brought back to you  the mysterious nothingness of money  a word
on a bit of paper. It was a sort of  magic, certainly  it  was triumph.  The
bitch-goddess!  Well,  if one  had  to prostitute oneself,  let it be  to  a
bitch-goddess!  One  could always  despise her  even while  one  prostituted
oneself to her, which was good.
     Clifford, of  course, had still many  childish taboos and fetishes.  He
wanted to be thought `really  good',  which was  all  cock-a-hoopy nonsense.
What was really  good was  what actually  caught  on. It was  no good  being
really  good and getting left with  it. It seemed as if most of the  `really
good' men just missed the bus. After all you only lived one life, and if you
missed  the bus, you were just  left on the pavement, along with the rest of
the failures.
     Connie was contemplating a winter in London with Clifford, next winter.
He  and she had caught the bus all right, so they might  as well ride on top
for a bit, and show it.
     The  worst of it was,  Clifford tended to become vague, absent, and  to
fall  into fits of vacant depression. It was the wound to his psyche  coming
out. But it  made  Connie want  to scream. Oh God, if  the mechanism  of the
consciousness itself was going to go wrong, then what was one to do? Hang it
all, one did one's bit! Was one to be let down absolutely?
     Sometimes she wept bitterly, but even  as  she wept she  was saying  to
herself: Silly fool, wetting hankies! As if that would get you anywhere!
     Since Michaelis,  she  had made up her mind  she  wanted nothing.  That
seemed the simplest solution of the otherwise insoluble. She wanted  nothing
more than what she'd got; only she wanted to  get ahead with what she'd got:
Clifford, the stories, Wragby, the Lady-Chatterley business, money and fame,
such  as  it  was...she wanted to go ahead with it  all. Love, sex, all that
sort of  stuff, just water-ices! Lick it up and forget it. If you don't hang
on to it in your mind, it's nothing. Sex especially...nothing!  Make up your
mind to  it,  and you've solved the problem.  Sex and a  cocktail: they both
lasted about as long,  had the  same effect, and amounted to about the  same
thing.
     But a child,  a baby! That was  still one of the sensations.  She would
venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to consider, and
it was curious, there wasn't  a  man in the world whose children you wanted.
Mick's children! Repulsive thought! As lief have  a child to a rabbit! Tommy
Dukes? he was very nice, but somehow you couldn't associate him with a baby,
another  generation.  He ended  in  himself.  And out  of  all the  rest  of
Clifford's pretty wide acquaintance, there was  not a man who did not  rouse
her contempt,  when she thought of having a child by him. There were several
who would  have  been quite  possible as  lover, even Mick. But to let  them
breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.
     So that was that!
     Nevertheless, Connie had the child at the back of her mind. Wait! wait!
She  would  sift the generations  of men through her sieve,  and  see if she
couldn't find one who  would do.---`Go ye into  the  streets and by  ways of
Jerusalem, and see if you can find  a man.' It had been impossible to find a
man in the  Jerusalem of the prophet, though  there  were thousands of  male
humans. But a man! C'est une autre chose!
     She  had  an  idea that  he  would  have  to  be a  foreigner:  not  an
Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real foreigner.
     But  wait! wait! Next  winter  she would  get Clifford to  London;  the
following  winter she would  get him abroad to the  South of  France, Italy.
Wait! She  was in no hurry about the child. That was her own private affair,
and the one point on which, in her own queer, female way, she was serious to
the bottom of her soul. She was not going to risk any chance comer, not she!
One might  take a lover almost  at any moment, but a man who  should beget a
child  on one...wait! wait! it's a  very different matter.---`Go ye into the
streets and byways of Jerusalem...' It was not a question of  love; it was a
question of  a man. Why,  one might even rather hate him, personally. Yet if
he  was  the  man,  what  would one's  personal hate  matter?  This business
concerned another part of oneself.
     It had  rained as  usual, and the paths  were too sodden for Clifford's
chair, but Connie would  go out. She went out alone every day now, mostly in
the wood, where she was really alone. She saw nobody there.
     This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper, and
as the boy  was  laid  up  with  influenza, somebody always seemed  to  have
influenza at Wragby, Connie said she would call at the cottage.
     The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were  slowly dying. Grey
and clammy  and silent,  even from the shuffling of the collieries,  for the
pits were  working  short  time, and today they were stopped altogether. The
end of all things!
     In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell
from  the bare boughs, with  a hollow little crash. For the  rest, among the
old  trees was  depth  within  depth  of  grey, hopeless  inertia,  silence,
nothingness.
     Connie walked  dimly on. From the old wood came  an ancient melancholy,
somehow soothing  to  her,  better than the  harsh insentience of  the outer
world.  She  liked  the inwardness  of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking
reticence of the old trees. They seemed a  very power of silence, and  yet a
vital presence. They, too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and
giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end;
to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all
things.  But  perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence,  the silence of
strong trees, meant something else.
     As she came out  of the wood on the north side, the keeper's cottage, a
rather dark, brown stone cottage, with gables and a handsome chimney, looked
uninhabited, it was so silent and alone. But a thread of smoke rose from the
chimney, and the little railed-in garden  in the front of the house  was dug
and kept very tidy. The door was shut.
     Now she was here she  felt  a little shy of  the man,  with his curious
far-seeing eyes.  She did not like bringing him orders,  and felt like going
away again. She knocked  softly, no one came.  She knocked again, but  still
not loudly. There was no answer. She peeped through the  window, and saw the
dark little  room,  with  its  almost sinister privacy,  not wanting  to  be
invaded.
     She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from  the
back of the cottage.  Having  failed  to make  herself heard, her mettle was
roused, she would not be defeated.
     So she went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage the
land rose steeply, so the back yard was sunken, and enclosed by  a low stone
wall. She turned the corner of the house and stopped. In the little yard two
paces beyond her, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked
to the  hips, his velveteen breeches  slipping down  over his slender loins.
And his white slim back was curved over a big bowl  of soapy water, in which
he ducked his  head, shaking his  head with a  queer, quick  little  motion,
lifting his slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water  from his ears,
quick,  subtle as  a  weasel playing  with water, and  utterly alone. Connie
backed  away round the corner of the house, and hurried away to the wood. In
spite of  herself,  she had  had a shock.  After all,  merely  a man washing
himself, commonplace enough, Heaven knows!
     Yet in some curious way it was  a visionary experience: it had  hit her
in  the middle of the body.  She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down  over
the pure, delicate, white loins,  the bones showing a  little, and the sense
of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed  her. Perfect,  white,
solitary  nudity  of a  creature that lives alone, and  inwardly  alone. And
beyond that,  a certain beauty of a  pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty,
not even  the  body  of beauty, but  a lambency, the warm, white  flame of a
single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a body!
     Connie had  received the  shock of vision in her womb, and she knew it;
it lay inside her.  But with her mind  she  was inclined  to ridicule. A man
washing himself in a back yard! No doubt with evil-smelling yellow soap! She
was  rather  annoyed;  why  should she be  made to stumble on  these  vulgar
privacies?
     So she walked  away  from herself, but after  a while she sat down on a
stump. She was too confused to think.  But in the coil of her confusion, she
was  determined  to  deliver  her message to  the  fellow.  She would not he
balked. She must give him time to dress himself, but not  time to go out. He
was probably preparing to go out somewhere.
     So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came  near, the cottage
looked  just the same.  A dog barked, and she knocked at the door, her heart
beating in spite of herself.
     She  heard  the man  coming  lightly  downstairs.  He opened  the  door
quickly, and startled her.  He looked uneasy himself, but  instantly a laugh
came on his face.
     `Lady Chatterley!' he said. `Will you come in?'
     His  manner  was so perfectly  easy  and  good, she  stepped  over  the
threshold into the rather dreary little room.
     `I only called with a message from Sir Clifford,' she said in her soft,
rather breathless voice.
     The man was looking  at  her with those blue, all-seeing  eyes  of his,
which  made her turn her face aside a little. He thought  her comely, almost
beautiful,  in her  shyness, and he took command of the situation himself at
once.
     `Would you  care to sit down?' he  asked, presuming she would not.  The
door stood open.
     `No  thanks!  Sir  Clifford wondered if you would and she delivered her
message, looking unconsciously  into his eyes again. And now his eyes looked
warm and kind, particularly to  a woman, wonderfully warm, and kind,  and at
ease.
     `Very good, your Ladyship. I will see to it at once.'
     Taking an order, his whole self had changed, glazed over with a sort of
hardness and distance. Connie hesitated, she  ought  to go. But  she  looked
round the clean, tidy, rather dreary little sitting-room with something like
dismay.
     `Do you live here quite alone?' she asked.
     `Quite alone, your Ladyship.'
     `But your mother...?'
     `She lives in her own cottage in the village.'
     `With the child?' asked Connie.
     `With the child!'
     And  his  plain, rather  worn  face  took  on  an  indefinable  look of
derision. It was a face that changed all the time, baking.
     `No,'  he said,  seeing Connie  stand at  a loss, `my mother  comes and
cleans up for me on Saturdays; I do the rest myself.'
     Again  Connie looked at  him.  His eyes  were  smiling again,  a little
mockingly, but warm and blue, and somehow kind. She wondered  at him. He was
in trousers  and flannel shirt and a grey tie,  his  hair soft and damp, his
face rather pale and worn-looking. When the eyes ceased to laugh they looked
as if they had suffered a great deal, still without losing their warmth. But
a pallor of isolation came over him, she was not really there for him.
     She wanted to say so many things, and she said nothing. Only she looked
up at him again, and remarked:
     `I hope I didn't disturb you?'
     The faint smile of mockery narrowed his eyes.
     `Only combing my hair, if you don't mind. I'm sorry I hadn't a coat on,
but  then I  had no idea  who  was knocking.  Nobody  knocks here,  and  the
unexpected sounds ominous.'
     He  went in front of her down  the garden path to hold the gate. In his
shirt, without  the clumsy velveteen coat, she saw again how slender he was,
thin, stooping a little. Yet, as she passed  him, there was  something young
and bright in his fair hair, and his  quick eyes.  He would  be a man  about
thirty-seven or eight.
     She plodded on into the wood,  knowing  he  was  looking after her;  he
upset her so much, in spite of herself.
     And he, as he  went indoors,  was thinking:  `She's nice,  she's  real!
She's nicer than she knows.'
     She wondered very much about him; he seemed so unlike a game-keeper, so
unlike a working-man  anyhow; although  he had  something in common with the
local people. But also something very uncommon.
     `The game-keeper,  Mellors,  is a curious kind of person,'  she said to
Clifford; `he might almost be a gentleman.'
     `Might he?' said Clifford. `I hadn't noticed.'
     `But isn't there something special about him?' Connie insisted.
     `I think he's quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He
only came out of the army  last year,  less than a year ago.  From  India, I
rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there, perhaps he was
an officer's servant,  and  improved on his position.  Some of  the men were
like that. But it  does them no good, they have to  fall back into their old
places when they get home again.'
     Connie gazed at Clifford contemplatively. She  saw in him the  peculiar
tight  rebuff  against anyone of  the  lower classes  who  might  be  really
climbing up, which she knew was characteristic of his breed.
     `But don't you think there is something special about him?' she asked.
     `Frankly, no! Nothing I had noticed.'
     He looked  at her curiously,  uneasily, half-suspiciously. And she felt
he wasn't  telling  her the real truth;  he wasn't  telling himself the real
truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional human
being. People must be more or less at his level, or below it.
     Connie  felt  again the  tightness,  niggardliness of  the  men  of her
generation. They were so tight, so scared of life!

        Chapter 7

     When Connie went up to  her bedroom she did what she had not done for a
long time: took off all her clothes, and looked at herself naked in the huge
mirror. She did  not know what she was looking for, or  at, very definitely,
yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on her.
     And she  thought,  as she had  thought  so often,  what a frail, easily
hurt,  rather  pathetic  thing  a  human body is, naked;  somehow  a  little
unfinished, incomplete!
     She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she was out
of  fashion: a little too female, not enough like an adolescent boy. She was
not  very  tall,  a bit  Scottish  and  short; but she had a certain fluent,
down-slipping grace that might have been beauty. Her skin was faintly tawny,
her  limbs had a  certain  stillness, her  body  should  have  had  a  full,
down-slipping richness; but it lacked something.
     Instead  of  ripening  its  firm, down-running  curves,  her  body  was
flattening and going a little harsh.  It was as if it had not had enough sun
and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless.
     Disappointed of its real womanhood,  it  had not succeeded in  becoming
boyish, and unsubstantial, and transparent; instead it had gone opaque.
     Her breasts  were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were
unripe, a little  bitter,  without meaning hanging there. And  her belly had
lost  the fresh,  round gleam it had  had when she was young, in the days of
her German  boy,  who  really  loved  her physically. Then  it was young and
expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going slack, and a little
flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, they used to look
so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness, somehow they too  were going
flat, slack, meaningless.
     Her  body  was  going  meaningless,  going  dull  and opaque,  so  much
insignificant substance. It made her  feel immensely depressed and hopeless.
What hope was there? She was old,  old  at  twenty-seven, with  no gleam and
sparkle  in  the  flesh.  Old  through  neglect  and  denial,  yes,  denial.
Fashionable women kept  their  bodies  bright like  delicate  porcelain,  by
external attention. There  was nothing inside the porcelain; but she was not
even  as  bright  as that.  The mental  life! Suddenly  she hated  it with a
rushing fury, the swindle!
     She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back, her waist, her
loins. She was getting thinner, but to  her it was not becoming. The crumple
of her waist at the  back, as she bent back to look, was a little weary; and
it used to be so  gay-looking. And the longish slope of her haunches and her
buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of richness. Gone! Only the German
boy had loved it, and he was ten years dead, very  nearly. How time went by!
Ten years  dead, and she  was only twenty-seven.  The  healthy boy  with his
fresh, clumsy sensuality that she had  then been so scornful of! Where would
she  find  it  now?  It  was  gone  out of  men.  They had  their  pathetic,
two-seconds spasms  like  Michaelis; but  no healthy human  sensuality, that
warms the blood and freshens the whole being.
     Still she thought the  most beautiful  part of her was the long-sloping
fall of the haunches from the socket of the back, and  the slumberous, round
stillness of  the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand,  the Arabs say,  soft and
downward-slipping  with a long slope. Here the  life  still lingered hoping.
But here too she was thinner, and going unripe, astringent.
     But the front of her body made  her miserable. It was already beginning
to slacken, with a slack sort of thinness, almost withered, going old before
it had ever really lived.  She thought of  the child she might somehow bear.
Was she fit, anyhow?
     She  slipped into her nightdress,  and  went to bed, where  she  sobbed
bitterly. And in her bitterness burned a cold indignation  against Clifford,
and his writings and his talk: against all the men of his sort who defrauded
a woman even of her own body.
     Unjust! Unjust! The sense of deep physical injustice burned to her very
soul.
     But  in the morning,  all the same, she  was  up at  seven,  and  going
downstairs to Clifford. She had  to help him in all the intimate things, for
he  had no man, and  refused a woman-servant. The housekeeper's husband, who
had  known him  as a boy, helped him, and did any  heavy lifting; but Connie
did the personal things, and she did them willingly. It was a demand on her,
but she had wanted to do what she could.
     So she hardly ever went away from Wragby, and never for more than a day
or two;  when  Mrs Betts, the housekeeper, attended to Clifford. He,  as was
inevitable in the course of time,  took all the service for granted.  It was
natural he should.
     And yet, deep inside herself, a sense of injustice, of being defrauded,
had begun to burn  in Connie. The physical sense of injustice is a dangerous
feeling,  once it  is awakened. It must have outlet, or it eats away the one
in  whom it  is  aroused.  Poor  Clifford, he was not to blame.  His was the
greater misfortune. It was all part of the general catastrophe.
     And yet was he not in a way to blame? This lack of warmth, this lack of
the  simple,  warm, physical  contact,  was he not to blame for that? He was
never  really warm,  nor  even  kind,  only thoughtful,  considerate,  in  a
well-bred, cold sort of way! But never warm as a man can be warm to a woman,
as  even  Connie's father could be warm to her, with the warmth of a man who
did himself well, and intended to, but who still could comfort it woman with
a bit of his masculine glow.
     But Clifford was  not like that. His whole race was not like that. They
were all inwardly hard and separate,  and warmth to them was just bad taste.
You had to  get on without it, and hold your own; which was all very well if
you were of the  same class and race. Then you could keep  yourself cold and
be very estimable, and  hold your own, and enjoy the satisfaction of holding
it. But if you were of another class and another race it  wouldn't do; there
was  no fun merely holding your own, and feeling you belonged  to the ruling
class.  What was the  point, when even  the smartest aristocrats  had really
nothing positive  of their own to hold, and  their rule was really  a farce,
not rule at all? What was the point? It was all cold nonsense.
     A sense of rebellion smouldered in Connie. What was the good of it all?
What was the good of her sacrifice, her devoting her life  to Clifford? What
was she serving, after  all? A cold spirit of vanity, that had no warm human
contacts,  and that was as  corrupt  as  any  low-born  Jew, in craving  for
prostitution  to  the  bitch-goddess,  Success.  Even  Clifford's  cool  and
contactless  assurance that he belonged  to the ruling class didn't  prevent
his tongue lolling out  of his mouth, as he panted  after the bitch-goddess.
After all, Michaelis was really  more  dignified in the matter, and far, far
more  successful.  Really,  if  you  looked  closely  at Clifford,  he was a
buffoon, and a buffoon is more humiliating than a bounder.
     As between the two men, Michaelis really had far more  use for her than
Clifford had.  He had  even more need of her.  Any good  nurse can attend to
crippled legs! And as for the heroic effort, Michaelis was a heroic rat, and
Clifford was very much of a poodle showing off.
     There were people staying in the house, among them Clifford's Aunt Eva,
Lady Bennerley. She was a thin woman of sixty, with a red nose, a widow, and
still something of a grande dame. She belonged to one  of the best families,
and  had  the  character  to  carry  it off.  Connie liked her, she  was  so
perfectly  simple  and [rank, as  far  as she  intended  to  be  frank,  and
superficially  kind. Inside herself she was  a  past-mistress in holding her
own, and holding other people a little lower. She was not at all a snob: far
too sure of herself. She  was perfect at the  social sport of coolly holding
her own, and making other people defer to her.
     She was kind to Connie, and  tried to worm into her  woman's soul  with
the sharp gimlet of her well-born observations.
     `You're quite  wonderful,  in my  opinion,' she said to Connie. `You've
done wonders for Clifford. I never  saw any budding genius myself, and there
he is, all the rage.'  Aunt Eva was quite  complacently proud  of Clifford's
success. Another feather in the family cap!  She didn't care  a straw  about
his books, but why should she?
     `Oh, I don't think it's my doing,' said Connie.
     `It must  be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't get
enough out of it.'
     `How?'
     `Look  at  the  way you are shut up here.  I said to Clifford: If  that
child rebels one day you'll have yourself to thank!'
     `But Clifford never denies me anything,' said Connie.
     `Look  here, my dear child'---and Lady Bennerley laid  her thin hand on
Connie's arm.  `A  woman has to live her  life, or live to repent not having
lived it. Believe  me!' And she  took another sip of brandy, which maybe was
her form of repentance.
     `But I do live my life, don't I?'
     `Not in my idea!  Clifford  should bring  you to London, and let you go
about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for you?
If I were you I should  think it wasn't good  enough. You'll  let your youth
slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your  middle  age too, repenting
it.'
     Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy.
     But Connie  was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the
smart  world by  Lady Bennerley.  She  didn't feel  really smart, it  wasn't
interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all;
like the soil of Labrador, which his gay little flowers on its  surface, and
a foot down is frozen.
     Tommy Dukes  was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack
Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more desultory  than when
only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for the  weather
was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to dance to.
     Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in
bottles, and women would be `immunized'.
     `Jolly good thing too!' she said. `Then a woman can live her own life.'
Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't.
     `How'd  you like  to be immunized?' Winterslow  asked her, with an ugly
smile.
     `I hope I am; naturally,' she said. `Anyhow the future's going  to have
more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her functions.'
     `Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether,' said Dukes.
     `I  do  think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot  of  the
physical disabilities,' said  Clifford. `All  the love-business for example,
it might just as well go.  I suppose it  would if  we could breed babies  in
bottles.'
     `No!' cried Olive. `That might leave all the more room for fun.'
     `I   suppose,'   said  Lady   Bennerley,   contemplatively,   `if   the
love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia, perhaps. A
little morphine in  all the  air. It  would be  wonderfully  refreshing  for
everybody.'
     `The  government  releasing  ether into the  air  on  Saturdays, for  a
cheerful weekend!' said Jack. `Sounds all right, but  where should we be  by
Wednesday?'
     `So  long  as  you  can  forget your  body you  are  happy,' said  Lady
Bennerley.  `And  the  moment you begin to  be aware of  your body, you  are
wretched. So, if civilization  is  any good, it has to help us to forget our
bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it.'
     `Help us  to get rid of our bodies altogether,'  said Winterslow. `It's
quite time man began  to improve  on his own nature, especially the physical
side of it.'
     `Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke,' said Connie.
     `It  won't happen,' said Dukes.  `Our old  show  will  come  flop;  our
civilization is going to  fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down the
chasm.  And  believe me, the  only  bridge  across  the  chasm  will be  the
phallus!'
     `Oh do! do be impossible, General!' cried Olive.
     `I believe our civilization is going to collapse,' said Aunt Eva.
     `And what will come after it?' asked Clifford.
     `I haven't  the  faintest idea, but something,  I  suppose,'  said  the
elderly lady.
     `Connie  says  people  like wisps of  smoke, and  Olive  says immunized
women, and  babies  in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is  the bridge to
what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?' said Clifford.
     `Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today,' said Olive. `Only hurry up
with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off.'
     `There might even be real  men, in the  next phase,' said Tommy. `Real,
intelligent,  wholesome men,  and  wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be  a
change,  an enormous  change  from us? We're not men,  and the women  aren't
women.  We're  only  cerebrating  make-shifts,  mechanical and  intellectual
experiments. There may  even come  a civilization  of genuine men and women,
instead of our little  lot  of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age  of
seven. It would be  even  more  amazing  than  men of  smoke  or  babies  in
bottles.'
     `Oh,  when people  begin to talk  about real  women,  I give  up,' said
Olive.
     `Certainly  nothing  but  the  spirit  in us  is  worth  having,'  said
Winterslow.
     `Spirits!' said Jack, drinking his whisky and soda.
     `Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!' said Dukes.
     `But it'll come, in  time, when we've  shoved the cerebral stone away a
bit, the money and the rest. Then we'll get a democracy of touch, instead of
a democracy of pocket.'
     Something  echoed  inside  Connie: `Give me the democracy of touch, the
resurrection of  the  body!'  She didn't at  all know what it meant,  but it
comforted her, as meaningless things may do.
     Anyhow  everything was  terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored
by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva,  by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and
even  by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What  hell it was, the continual rattle of
it!
     Then,  when  all  the  people went, it  was  no  better.  She continued
plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold