your chest it's
nearly  black, and your hair isn't dark on your head: but your  moustache is
hard and dark  red, and your hair here,  your  love-hair, is  like  a little
brush of bright red-gold mistletoe. It's the loveliest of all!'
     He  looked down and saw the milky bits of forget-me-nots in the hair on
his groin.
     `Ay!  That's  where  to  put  forget-me-nots,  in the  man-hair, or the
maiden-hair. But don't you care about the future?'
     She looked up at him.
     `Oh, I do, terribly!' she said.
     `Because when I feel the  human world  is doomed,  has doomed itself by
its own mingy  beastliness, then  I feel the Colonies aren't far enough. The
moon wouldn't be far enough, because  even there you could look back and see
the earth, dirty, beastly, unsavoury among all the stars: made foul  by men.
Then  I  feel  I've  swallowed gall,  and  it's  eating  my inside out,  and
nowhere's far enough away to get  away. But when  I  get a turn, I forget it
all again.  Though  it's a  shame, what's  been done  to  people  these last
hundred  years:  men turned into nothing but labour-insects,  and all  their
manhood taken away, and all  their real life.  I'd wipe the machines off the
face of the earth  again,  and end the industrial epoch  absolutely,  like a
black mistake. But since I  can't, an' nobody can, I'd better hold my peace,
an'  try an'  live my own  life: if  I've got one  to live,  which  I rather
doubt.'
     The thunder had ceased outside, but the rain which had abated, suddenly
came striking down, with a last blench of  lightning and mutter of departing
storm. Connie  was  uneasy.  He had  talked so long now,  and he  was really
talking  to  himself  not  to  her.  Despair  seemed  to  come down  on  him
completely, and she  was feeling  happy, she  hated  despair.  She  knew her
leaving him, which he had only just realized inside himself had  plunged him
back into this mood. And she triumphed a little.
     She opened the door and looked at the straight heavy rain, like a steel
curtain, and had a sudden desire to rush out into it, to rush away. She  got
up, and  began  swiftly  pulling off  her  stockings,  then  her  dress  and
underclothing,  and  he held  his  breath. Her  pointed keen  animal breasts
tipped and stirred as  she  moved. She  was  ivory-coloured in  the greenish
light. She slipped on her rubber shoes again and ran out with a wild  little
laugh, holding up her breasts to the heavy rain and spreading  her arms, and
running blurred in the  rain  with  the eurhythmic dance  movements she  had
learned  so  long ago in Dresden. It was a strange pallid figure lifting and
falling,  bending so the  rain beat  and glistened  on  the  full  haunches,
swaying up again  and coming  belly-forward through the rain,  then stooping
again  so  that only the full  loins and buttocks were offered in a  kind of
homage towards him, repeating a wild obeisance.
     He laughed wryly, and threw off his clothes. It was too much. He jumped
out, naked and white, with  a  little shiver, into  the  hard slanting rain.
Flossie sprang before him with  a frantic little bark. Connie, her hair  all
wet and sticking to her head, turned her hot face and saw him. Her blue eyes
blazed  with excitement as she turned and ran fast, with  a strange charging
movement,  out of the clearing  and down the  path, the  wet boughs whipping
her. She ran,  and  he saw nothing but  the  round  wet head, the  wet  back
leaning forward  in  flight,  the rounded buttocks  twinkling:  a  wonderful
cowering female nakedness in flight.
     She was nearly at  the  wide riding when he came up and flung his naked
arm round her  soft,  naked-wet middle. She gave a  shriek  and straightened
herself and the  heap of her soft, chill flesh  came up against his body. He
pressed it all up against him, madly, the heap of soft, chilled female flesh
that  became  quickly  warm as flame, in contact. The rain streamed on  them
till they smoked.  He gathered her lovely, heavy posteriors one in each hand
and pressed  them in towards him in a  frenzy, quivering motionless  in  the
rain. Then suddenly he tipped her up and fell with  her on the path, in  the
roaring  silence of the  rain, and short and sharp,  he took her,  short and
sharp and finished, like an animal.
     He got up in an instant, wiping the rain from his eyes.
     `Come in,' he  said, and they started  running back  to the hut. He ran
straight and swift: he didn't  like the rain. But she came slower, gathering
forget-me-nots and campion and bluebells, running  a few steps and  watching
him fleeing away from her.
     When she  came  with  her flowers, panting to the  hut, he  had already
started  a fire, and the  twigs were crackling.  Her sharp breasts  rose and
fell,  her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy and
her body glistened and trickled. Wide-eyed and breathless,  with a small wet
head and full, trickling, naîve haunches, she looked another creature.
     He  took the old  sheet and rubbed her down, she standing like a child.
Then he rubbed himself having shut the door of the hut. The fire was blazing
up. She ducked her  head in  the other end of the sheet, and rubbed  her wet
hair.
     `We're drying ourselves together on  the same towel, we shall quarrel!'
he said.
     She looked up for a moment, her hair all odds and ends.
     `No!'  she said, her  eyes wide. `It's not a towel, it's  a sheet.' And
she went on busily rubbing her head, while he busily rubbed his.
     Still panting with their exertions,  each wrapped  in an  army blanket,
but the  front of the body open to the fire, they sat  on a log side by side
before the blaze, to get quiet. Connie hated the feel of the blanket against
her skin. But now the sheet was all wet.
     She  dropped  her blanket and kneeled  on  the clay hearth, holding her
head to the fire, and shaking her  hair to dry it. He watched  the beautiful
curving drop of her haunches. That fascinated him today. How it  sloped with
a rich down-slope to the heavy roundness of  her buttocks!  And in  between,
folded in the secret warmth, the secret entrances!
     He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves
and the globe-fullness.
     `Tha's got such a nice tail on thee,' he said, in the throaty caressive
dialect.  `Tha's got the nicest arse of  anybody.  It's  the  nicest, nicest
woman's arse as is! An' ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts. Tha'rt
not one o' them button-arsed lasses as should be lads,  are ter! Tha's got a
real  soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in 'is guts. It's a bottom
as could hold the world up, it is!'
     All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail, till it
seemed as if  a  slippery sort of fire came from it into his hands.  And his
finger-tips touched  the  two secret openings to  her body, time after time,
with a soft little brush of fire.
     `An' if tha shits an' if tha pisses, I'm glad.  I don't want a woman as
couldna shit nor piss.'
     Connie could not help  a  sudden  snort of astonished laughter, but  he
went on unmoved.
     `Tha'rt real,  tha art! Tha'art  real, even a bit of a bitch. Here  tha
shits  an' here tha pisses:  an' I lay my hand on 'em both an' like thee for
it. I like thee for it.  Tha's  got a proper, woman's arse, proud of itself.
It's none ashamed of itself this isna.'
     He laid his hand close and firm  over her secret places, in a  kind  of
close greeting.
     `I  like it,' he said. `I like it! An' if I only lived ten minutes, an'
stroked thy arse an' got to know it, I should reckon I'd lived one life, see
ter! Industrial system or not! Here's one o' my lifetimes.'
     She turned round and  climbed into his lap, clinging to him. `Kiss me!'
she whispered.
     And she knew the thought of  their separation was  latent in both their
minds, and at last she was sad.
     She  sat  on  his  thighs,  her  head  against   his  breast,  and  her
ivory-gleaming legs loosely  apart, the fire  glowing unequally  upon  them.
Sitting with his head dropped, he  looked at the folds  of her  body in  the
fire-glow,  and at the fleece of soft  brown hair that hung down  to a point
between  her open thighs. He  reached  to the table behind, and took up  her
bunch of flowers, still so wet that drops of rain fell on to her.
     `Flowers stops  out of doors  all weathers,'  he  said. `They  have  no
houses.'
     `Not even a hut!' she murmured.
     With quiet fingers he  threaded a few forget-me-not flowers in the fine
brown fleece of the mound of Venus.
     `There!' he said. `There's forget-me-nots in the right place!'
     She looked  down at  the  milky  odd  little  flowers  among the  brown
maiden-hair at the lower tip of her body.
     `Doesn't it look pretty!' she said.
     `Pretty as life,' he replied.
     And he stuck a pink campion-bud among the hair.
     `There!  That's  me  where  you won't  forget me! That's  Moses  in the
bull-rushes.'
     `You  don't  mind, do  you, that I'm going  away?' she asked wistfully,
looking up into his face.
     But his face  was inscrutable, under the heavy  brows. He kept it quite
blank.
     `You do as you wish,' he said.
     And he spoke in good English.
     `But I won't go if you don't wish it,' she said, clinging to him.
     There was silence. He leaned and put another piece of wood on the fire.
The flame  glowed on his silent,  abstracted  face. She waited, but he  said
nothing.
     `Only I thought  it would be a good way to begin a break with Clifford.
I do want a child. And it would give me a chance to, to---,' she resumed.
     `To let them think a few lies,' he said.
     `Yes, that among other things. Do you want them to think the truth?'
     `I don't care what they think.'
     `I do! I don't want them  handling me with their unpleasant cold minds,
not  while I'm  still at Wragby.  They can  think  what  they like  when I'm
finally gone.'
     He was silent.
     `But Sir Clifford expects you to come back to him?'
     `Oh, I must come back,' she said: and there was silence.
     `And would you have a child in Wragby?' he asked.
     She closed her arm round his neck.
     `If you wouldn't take me away, I should have to,' she said.
     `Take you where to?'
     `Anywhere! away! But right away from Wragby.'
     `When?'
     `Why, when I come back.'
     `But what's the good  of coming back,  doing the thing twice, if you're
once gone?' he said.
     `Oh,  I  must  come back.  I've promised! I've  promised so faithfully.
Besides, I come back to you, really.'
     `To your husband's game-keeper?'
     `I don't see that that matters,' she said.
     `No?' He mused a while. `And when would you think of  going away again,
then; finally? When exactly?'
     `Oh, I  don't know. I'd come  back  from Venice.  And then we'd prepare
everything.'
     `How prepare?'
     `Oh, I'd tell Clifford. I'd have to tell him.'
     `Would you!'
     He remained silent. She put her arms round his neck.
     `Don't make it difficult for me,' she pleaded.
     `Make what difficult?'
     `For me to go to Venice and arrange things.'
     A little smile, half a grin, flickered on his face.
     `I don't make it  difficult,' he said.  `I  only want  to find out just
what you  are after. But you  don't really know yourself. You want  to  take
time:  get away and look  at it. I don't blame you. I think you're wise. You
may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don't blame you. I've no Wragbys to
offer. In fact, you  know what you'll get out  of me. No, no, I think you're
right! I really do! And I'm not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by
you. There's that too.'
     She felt somehow as if he were giving her tit for tat.
     `But you want me, don't you?' she asked.
     `Do you want me?'
     `You know I do. That's evident.'
     `Quite! And when do you want me?'
     `You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I'm out of breath
with you. I must get calm and clear.'
     `Quite! Get calm and clear!'
     She was a little offended.
     `But you trust me, don't you?' she said.
     `Oh, absolutely!'
     She heard the mockery in his tone.
     `Tell me then,' she said flatly; `do you think it would be  better if I
don't go to Venice?'
     `I'm sure it's better if you do go to  Venice,' he replied in the cool,
slightly mocking voice.
     `You know it's next Thursday?' she said.
     `Yes!'
     She now began to muse. At last she said:
     `And we shall know better where we are when I come back, shan't we?'
     `Oh surely!'
     The curious gulf of silence between them!
     `I've  been  to  the  lawyer  about  my  divorce,' he  said,  a  little
constrainedly.
     She gave a slight shudder.
     `Have you!' she said. `And what did he say?'
     `He said I ought to have done it before;  that may be a difficulty. But
since I was in the  army, he thinks it will go through all right. If only it
doesn't bring her down on my head!'
     `Will she have to know?'
     `Yes! she is served with  a notice:  so is the  man she lives with, the
co-respondent.'
     `Isn't  it hateful, all the  performances! I  suppose I'd  have  to  go
through it with Clifford.'
     There was a silence.
     `And of course,' he said, `I have  to live  an  exemplary  life for the
next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there's temptation removed
for a week or two, at least.'
     `Am  I temptation!'  she  said,  stroking  his face. `I'm  so glad  I'm
temptation to  you!  Don't  let's  think about it!  You frighten me when you
start thinking: you  roll me out flat.  Don't let's  think about  it. We can
think so much when we are apart. That's the whole point! I've been thinking,
I must come to you for another night before I go.  I must come  once more to
the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?'
     `Isn't that when your sister will be there?'
     `Yes! But  she said we  would start at tea-time. So we  could start  at
tea-time. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with you.
     `But then she'd have to know.'
     `Oh, I shall tell her. I've  more or less told her already. I must talk
it all over with Hilda. She's a great help, so sensible.'
     He was thinking of her plan.
     `So  you'd start off  from Wragby at tea-time,  as if you were going to
London? Which way were you going?'
     `By Nottingham and Grantham.'
     `And then  your sister would drop you somewhere and you'd walk or drive
back here? Sounds very risky, to me.'
     `Does it?  Well, then, Hilda could  bring me  back. She could sleep  at
Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again  in the
morning. It's quite easy.'
     `And the people who see you?'
     `I'll wear goggles and a veil.'
     He pondered for some time.
     `Well,' he said. `You please yourself as usual.'
     `But wouldn't it please you?'
     `Oh yes! It'd please me all right,' he said a little  grimly.  `I might
as well smite while the iron's hot.'
     `Do  you know what I thought?' she said suddenly. `It suddenly came  to
me. You are the "Knight of the Burning Pestle"!'
     `Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?'
     `Yes!' she said. `Yes! You're Sir Pestle and I'm Lady Mortar.'
     `All right,  then I'm knighted.  John Thomas is Sir John, to  your Lady
Jane.'
     `Yes! John  Thomas  is knighted! I'm  my-lady-maiden-hair, and you must
have flowers too. Yes!'
     She threaded two  pink campions  in the bush of red-gold hair above his
penis.
     `There!' she said. `Charming! Charming! Sir John!'
     And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.
     `And  you won't  forget me there,  will  you?' She  kissed  him on  the
breast,  and  made  two bits  of forget-me-not lodge  one over each  nipple,
kissing him again.
     `Make a  calendar of me!' he said.  He  laughed, and  the flowers shook
from his breast.
     `Wait a bit!' he said.
     He  rose, and opened the door of the  hut. Flossie, lying in the porch,
got up and looked at him.
     `Ay, it's me!' he said.
     The  rain had  ceased.  There was  a  wet, heavy,  perfumed  stillness.
Evening was approaching.
     He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the
riding. Connie watched  his thin, white  figure, and it looked to her like a
ghost, an apparition moving away from her.
     When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of
the hut, with  a  blanket  round her,  looking into the drenched, motionless
silence.
     But  he was coming back, trotting  strangely, and carrying flowers. She
was a little afraid of him, as  if he were not quite human. And when he came
near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.
     He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts
and honeysuckle in  small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her
breasts,  sticking in tufts  of bluebells  and campion:  and in her navel he
poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden-hair were forget-me-nots and
woodruff.
     `That's  you in all  your glory!' he said. `Lady Jane,  at her  wedding
with John Thomas.'
     And he  stuck  flowers in the hair of his own body, and  wound a bit of
creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his
navel. She  watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a
campion flower in his moustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.
     `This is  John Thomas marryin'  Lady Jane,'  he said. `An'  we  mun let
Constance an' Oliver go their ways. Maybe---'
     He spread out his  hand  with  a gesture, and then he sneezed, sneezing
away the flowers from his nose and his navel. He sneezed again.
     `Maybe what?' she said, waiting for him to go on.
     He looked at her a little bewildered.
     `Eh?' he said.
     `Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,' she insisted.
     `Ay, what was I going to say?'
     He had forgotten. And it  was  one  of the disappointments of her life,
that he never finished.
     A yellow ray of sun shone over the trees.
     `Sun!' he said. `And time you went. Time, my Lady, time! What's that as
flies without wings, your Ladyship? Time! Time!'
     He reached for his shirt.
     `Say goodnight! to  John Thomas,' he said, looking  down at  his penis.
`He's safe in the arms of creeping Jenny! Not much burning pestle about  him
just now.'
     And he put his flannel shirt over his head.
     `A  man's most dangerous moment,' he said, when his  head had  emerged,
`is when he's getting into his shirt. Then he puts his head in a bag. That's
why  I  prefer those American  shirts, that you put on  like  a jacket.' She
still stood watching him.  He stepped  into his short  drawers, and buttoned
them round the waist.
     `Look at Jane!' he said. `In all her blossoms! Who'll  put blossoms  on
you next year, Jinny? Me, or somebody else? "Good-bye, my bluebell, farewell
to you!" I hate that  song, it's early war days.'  He then sat down, and was
pulling on his stockings. She still  stood unmoving. He laid his hand on the
slope  of her buttocks.  `Pretty little  Lady  Jane!' he  said.  `Perhaps in
Venice you'll find a man  who'll  put jasmine  in your  maiden-hair,  and  a
pomegranate flower in your navel. Poor little lady Jane!'
     `Don't say those things!' she said. `You only say them to hurt me.'
     He dropped his head. Then he said, in dialect:
     `Ay, maybe I do, maybe I do!  Well  then, I'll  say nowt, an'  ha' done
wi't.  But  tha mun  dress thysen, all' go  back  to  thy stately  homes  of
England, how beautiful  they stand. Time's up!  Time's  up for Sir John, an'
for  little Lady Jane!  Put thy  shimmy on, Lady  Chatterley! Tha  might  be
anybody,  standin' there be-out even a shimmy, an'  a few  rags  o' flowers.
There then, there then,  I'll undress thee, tha  bob-tailed young throstle.'
And he took the leaves from her hair, kissing her damp hair, and the flowers
from her breasts,  and kissed her  breasts, and kissed her navel, and kissed
her  maiden-hair, where he left  the flowers threaded. `They  mun stop while
they will,' he said.  `So!  There  tha'rt bare again,  nowt but a bare-arsed
lass an' a bit of a Lady  Jane!  Now put  thy shimmy on, for  tha mun go, or
else Lady Chatterley's goin' to be late for dinner,  an' where 'ave yer been
to my pretty maid!'
     She  never knew how to answer  him when he was in this condition of the
vernacular. So she dressed herself and prepared to go a little ignominiously
home to Wragby. Or so she felt it: a little ignominiously home.
     He would accompany  her to the  broad riding. His  young pheasants were
all right under the shelter.
     When  he  and she  came out on  to the  riding, there  was  Mrs  Bolton
faltering palely towards them.
     `Oh, my Lady, we wondered if anything had happened!'
     `No! Nothing has happened.'
     Mrs Bolton looked  into the man's face, that was smooth and new-looking
with love. She met his half-laughing,  half-mocking eyes. He  always laughed
at mischance. But he looked at her kindly.
     `Evening,  Mrs Bolton! Your  Ladyship will be all right now,  so I  can
leave you. Good-night to your Ladyship! Good-night, Mrs Bolton!'
     He saluted and turned away.

        Chapter 16

     Connie  arrived  home  to an ordeal of  cross-questioning. Clifford had
been out at  tea-time, had come  in just before the storm, and where was her
ladyship?  Nobody knew, only Mrs  Bolton  suggested  she had gone for a walk
into the wood. Into the wood, in such a storm! Clifford for once let himself
get into a state of nervous frenzy. He started  at every flash of lightning,
and blenched at every roll of  thunder. He looked at the icy thunder-rain as
if it dare the end of the world. He got more and more worked up.
     Mrs Bolton tried to soothe him.
     `She'll be sheltering  in  the  hut,  till  it's over. Don't worry, her
Ladyship is all right.'
     `I don't like her being in the wood in a  storm like this! I don't like
her being  in the wood at all! She's been gone now more than two hours. When
did she go out?'
     `A little while before you came in.'
     `I  didn't see her in the  park. God  knows  where she is and what  has
happened to her.'
     `Oh,  nothing's  happened  to  her. You'll see, she'll be home directly
after the rain stops. It's just the rain that's keeping her.'
     But her ladyship did not come  home directly  the rain stopped. In fact
time went by,  the sun came out for his last yellow glimpse, and there still
was  no  sign of  her. The sun was set,  it  was growing dark, and the first
dinner-gong had rung.
     `It's no good!' said Clifford in a frenzy. `I'm going to send out Field
and Betts to find her.'
     `Oh don't do that!'  cried Mrs Bolton. `They'll think there's a suicide
or something. Oh  don't  start a lot of talk going. Let me slip over  to the
hut and see if she's not there. I'll find her all right.'
     So, after some persuasion, Clifford allowed her to go.
     And  so  Connie  had  come  upon  her  in the  drive, alone and  palely
loitering.
     `You mustn't mind me coming to look for you, my  Lady! But Sir Clifford
worked  himself  up  into  such  a state.  He  made sure  you were struck by
lightning, or killed by a falling tree. And he was  determined to send Field
and Betts to the wood to find the body. So I thought I'd better come, rather
than set all the servants agog.
     She  spoke  nervously.  She  could  still  see  on  Connie's  face  the
smoothness and the half-dream  of passion, and she could feel the irritation
against herself.
     `Quite!' said Connie. And she could say no more.
     The two women plodded on through the wet world, in silence, while great
drops  splashed like explosions  in  the wood.  Ben they  came to the  park,
Connie strode  ahead, and  Mrs  Bolton  panted  a  little.  She  was getting
plumper.
     `How foolish  of  Clifford  to  make a  fuss!'  said Connie  at length,
angrily, really speaking to herself.
     `Oh, you know what  men are! They like working themselves up. But he'll
be all right as soon as he sees your Ladyship.'
     Connie  was very angry  that Mrs Bolton knew her secret: for  certainly
she knew it.
     Suddenly Constance stood still on the path.
     `It's monstrous that  I should have to be followed!' she said, her eyes
flashing.
     `Oh! your  Ladyship,  don't say that! He'd certainly have  sent the two
men, and they'd have  come straight to the  hut. I didn't know where it was,
really.'
     Connie  flushed darker  with rage, at  the suggestion. Yet,  while  her
passion was on her, she could not  lie. She could not even pretend there was
nothing between  herself and the keeper. She looked  at the other woman, who
stood so sly, with  her  head dropped: yet somehow,  in her  femaleness,  an
ally.
     `Oh well!' she said. `I fit is so it is so. I don't mind!'
     `Why, you're all right,  my Lady!  You've  only been sheltering  in the
hut. It's absolutely nothing.'
     They  went  on  to the house.  Connie  marched in  to Clifford's  room,
furious with him, furious  with his  pale, over-wrought  fee  and  prominent
eyes.
     `I must say, I don't  think you need send the servants  after  me,' she
burst out.
     `My  God!'  he exploded. `Where have  you been, woman, You've been gone
hours,  hours,  and in  a  storm like this! What  the  hell  do  you  go  to
that-bloody wood for? What  have you been up to?  It's  hours even since the
rain  stopped, hours! Do you know  what time it  is? You're enough  to drive
anybody  mad. Where have you been? What in the name  of hell  have  you been
doing?'
     `And  what if I don't choose  to tell you?' She pulled her hat from her
head and shook her hair.
     He lied  at her  with  his eyes  bulging, and  yellow  coming into  the
whites. It  was very bad  for him to get into these rages: Mrs Bolton had  a
weary time with him, for days after. Connie felt a sudden qualm.
     But really!' she said,  milder. `Anyone would think  I'd  been  I don't
know where! I just  sat in the hut during all  the storm, and  made myself a
little fire, and was happy.'
     She spoke now easily. After all, why work him up any more!
     He looked at her suspiciously.
     And look at your hair!' he said; `look at yourself!'
     `Yes!' she replied calmly. `I ran out in the rain with no clothes on.'
     He stared at her speechless.
     `You must be mad!' he said.
     `Why? To like a shower bath from the rain?'
     `And how did you dry yourself?'
     `On an old towel and at the fire.'
     He still stared at her in a dumbfounded way.
     `And supposing anybody came,' he said.
     `Who would come?'
     `Who? Why,  anybody! And  Mellors. Does  he come?  He must come in  the
evenings.'
     `Yes, he came later, when it had cleared up, to feed the pheasants with
corn.'
     She spoke  with amazing nonchalance. Mrs  Bolton, who was listening  in
the next room,  heard in sheer  admiration. To  think a woman could carry it
off so naturally!
     `And suppose he'd  come while  you were running  about in the rain with
nothing on, like a maniac?'
     `I suppose he'd  have had the fright of his life, and  cleared  out  as
fast as he could.'
     Clifford  still  stared  at her  transfixed.  What  he  thought  in his
under-consciousness he would never know.  And he was too much taken aback to
form  one clear thought  in his upper consciousness. He just simply accepted
what she  said, in a  sort of blank. And he admired  her. He could not  help
admiring her. She looked so flushed and handsome and smooth: love smooth.
     `At  least,'  he said,  subsiding, `you'll  be lucky if you've got  off
without a severe cold.'
     `Oh, I haven't got a cold,' she replied. She was thinking to herself of
the other  man's  words: Tha's got the nicest  woman's  arse of anybody! She
wished, she dearly wished she could tell  Clifford  that this  had been said
her, during  the famous thunderstorm. However! She bore  herself rather like
an offended queen, and went upstairs to change.
     That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice  to her. He was reading one of
the latest scientific-religious books: he had a streak of a spurious sort of
religion in him, and was egocentrically concerned with the future of his own
ego. It was like  his habit to make conversation to Connie about  some book,
since the conversation between them had to be made,  almost chemically. They
had almost chemically to concoct it in their heads.
     `What do  you  think  of this,  by the way?' he said,  reaching for his
book. `You'd  have no need to cool  your  ardent  body by running out in the
rain, if only we have a  few more aeons  of evolution behind us. Ah, here it
is!---"The  universe shows us  two  aspects: on  one  side it is  physically
wasting, on the other it is spiritually ascending."'
     Connie listened, expecting more. But Clifford  was  waiting. She looked
at him in surprise.
     `And  if it spiritually ascends,' she  said, `what does  it  leave down
below, in the place where its tail used to be?'
     `Ah!'  he  said. `Take the  man  for what  he means. Ascending  is  the
opposite of his wasting, I presume.'
     `Spiritually blown out, so to speak!'
     `No, but seriously, without joking: do  you think  there is anything in
it?'
     She looked at him again.
     `Physically wasting?' she said. `I see you  getting fatter, and I'm sot
wasting myself. Do you think the sun is smaller than he used to be? He's not
to  me. And I suppose the apple Adam offered  Eve wasn't really much bigger,
if any, than one of our orange pippins. Do you think it was?'
     `Well, hear how he goes on: "It is thus slowly passing, with a slowness
inconceivable  in our  measures of  time,  to new  creative conditions, amid
which the physical world, as we at present know it, will he represented by a
ripple barely to be distinguished from nonentity."'
     She listened with a glisten of amusement. All sorts  of improper things
suggested themselves. But she only said:
     `What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could
know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means he's a physical
failure on the earth,  so  he wants to  make the whole universe  a  physical
failure. Priggish little impertinence!'
     `Oh, but listen! Don't  interrupt the great man's solemn  words!---"The
present type of order in  the world has risen from an unimaginable part, and
will   find  its  grave  in  an   unimaginable  future.  There  remains  the
inexhaustive realm  of  abstract  forms,  and creativity with  its  shifting
character ever  determined afresh by its own  creatures, and God, upon whose
wisdom all forms of order depend."---There, that's how he winds up!'
     Connie sat listening contemptuously.
     `He's  spiritually  blown  out,'  she  said.  `What  a  lot  of  stuff!
Unnimaginables, and types of  order in graves, and realms of abstract forms,
and creativity with a shifty character,  and  God  mixed up  with  forms  of
order! Why, it's idiotic!'
     `I must say, it is  a little vaguely  conglomerate, a mixture of gases,
so  to speak,' said Clifford. `Still, I think there is something in the idea
that the universe is physically wasting and spiritually ascending.'
     `Do you? Then let it ascend, so long as it leaves me safely and solidly
physically here below.'
     `Do you like your physique?' he asked.
     `I love it!' And  through her mind  went the words:  It's  the  nicest,
nicest woman's arse as is!
     `But that is really rather  extraordinary,  because there's  no denying
it's an  encumbrance.  But  then I suppose a woman doesn't  take  a  supreme
pleasure in the life of the mind.'
     `Supreme  pleasure?' she said,  looking  up at him.  `Is that  sort  of
idiocy the supreme pleasure of the life of the  mind? No thank you!  Give me
the body. I believe the life of the body  is a greater reality than the life
of  the mind: when the body  is really wakened to  life. But so many people,
like  your  famous  wind-machine,  have  only got minds tacked  on to  their
physical corpses.'
     He looked at her in wonder.
     `The life of the body,' he said, `is just the life of the animals.'
     `And that's better than the life of professional corpses. But  it's not
true!  the human body is only  just coming  to real life. With the Greeks it
gave  a  lovely flicker, then  Plato  and  Aristotle  killed  it, and  Jesus
finished it off.  But now  the body  is coming really to life,  it is really
rising from  the tomb. And It will be  a lovely, lovely  life in  the lovely
universe, the life of the human body.'
     `My  dear, you speak as if  you were  ushering it all in! True, you  am
going away  on  a  holiday: but don't please  be quite  so indecently elated
about it.  Believe me, whatever  God there is is slowly eliminating the guts
and  alimentary  system  from the  human being, to  evolve  a  higher,  more
spiritual being.'
     `Why  should  I believe you, Clifford, when I  feel that  whatever  God
there  is  has at  last  wakened  up  in my guts,  as you  call them, and is
rippling so happily there, like dawn. Why should I believe you, when I  feel
so very much the contrary?'
     `Oh,  exactly! And  what has caused this  extraordinary  change in you?
running out  stark  naked in  the rain, and  playing  Bacchante? desire  for
sensation, or the anticipation of going to Venice?'
     `Both! Do you think it is horrid of me to be so thrilled at going off?'
she said.
     `Rather horrid to show it so plainly.'
     `Then I'll hide it.'
     `Oh,  don't  trouble! You almost  communicate  a thrill to me. I almost
feel that it is I who am going off.'
     `Well, why don't you come?'
     `We've gone over  all that. And as  a matter of fact,  I  suppose  your
greatest thrill  comes from being able to  say  a temporary farewell to  all
this. Nothing  so thrilling, for the moment, as Good-bye-to-all!---But every
parting means a meeting elsewhere. And every meeting is a new bondage.'
     `I'm not going to enter any new bondages.'
     `Don't boast, while the gods are listening,' he said.
     She pulled up short.
     `No! I won't boast!' she said.
     But she was  thrilled, none the less, to be  going off:  to feel  bonds
snap. She couldn't help it.
     Clifford, who  couldn't sleep, gambled all night with Mrs Bolton,  till
she was too sleepy almost to live.
     And the day came round  for Hilda to arrive. Connie  had arranged  with
Mellors that if everything promised well for their night together, she would
hang a green shawl out of the window. If there were frustration, a red one.
     Mrs Bolton helped Connie to pack.
     `It will be so good for your Ladyship to have a change.'
     `I think it  will. You  don't mind having  Sir  Clifford on your  hands
alone for a time, do you?'
     `Oh no! I can manage him quite all right. I mean, I can do all he needs
me to do. Don't you think he's better than he used to be?'
     `Oh much! You do wonders with him.'
     `Do  I though! But men are  all  alike:  just  babies, and you have  to
flatter them and wheedle them  and let  them think  they're having their own
way. Don't you find it so, my Lady?'
     `I'm afraid I haven't much experience.'
     Connie paused in her occupation.
     `Even your husband, did you have to manage  him, and wheedle him like a
baby?' she asked, looking at the other woman.
     Mrs Bolton paused too.
     `Well!' she said. `I had to do a good bit of coaxing, with him too. But
he always knew  what I was after, I must say that. But he generally  gave in
to me.'
     `He was never the lord and master thing?'
     `No! At least there'd be  a look in his eyes sometimes, and then I knew
I'd got to give in. But  usually he gave in to me. No, he was never lord and
master. But  neither  was I. I knew when I could go no further with him, and
then I gave in: though it cost me a good bit, sometimes.'
     `And what if you had held out against him?'
     `Oh, I don't know, I  never  did. Even when  he was in the wrong, if he
was fixed, I gave in. You see, I never wanted  to break what was between us.
And if you really set your will against a man, that finishes it. If you care
for a man, you have  to give in to him  once he's really determined; whether
you're  in the right or  not, you have to give in. Else you break something.
But I must say, Ted 'ud give in to me sometimes, when I was set on  a thing,
and in the wrong. So I suppose it cuts both ways.'
     `And that's how you are with all your patients?' asked Connie.
     `Oh, That's different. I don't care at all,  in  the same  way. I  know
what's good for  them, or I try to, and then I  just contrive to manage them
for  their own good.  It's  not like anybody as you're really fond  of. It's
quite  different.  Once  you've  been  really  fond  of  a man,  you can  be
affectionate to  almost any man, if he needs  you at  all. But it's not  the
same thing. You don't really care. I doubt, once you've really cared, if you
can ever really care again.'
     These words frightened Connie.
     `Do you think one can only care once?' she asked.
     `Or never. Most women never care,  never begin to. They don't know what
it means.  Nor men either. But when I  see a woman as cares, my heart stands
still for her.'
     `And do you think men easily take offence?'
     `Yes! If you wound them on their pride. But aren't women the same? Only
our two prides are a bit different.'
     Connie pondered this. She began  again to have some misgiving about her
gag away. After  all, was  she not giving her  man the go-by,  if only for a
short time? And he knew it. That's why he was so queer and sarcastic.
     Still! the human existence is  a good deal controlled by the machine of
external  circumstance. She was in  the power of  this machine. She couldn't
extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn't even want to.
     Hilda arrived in  good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater
car,  with  her suit-case strapped  firmly behind. She looked as  demure and
maidenly as  ever, but she had  the  same will of her own. She  had the very
hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was
now divorcing her.
     Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover.
For the time being, she was `off' men. She was very well content to be quite
her own mistress: and mistress of her  two children, whom she was  going  to
bring up `properly', whatever that may mean.
     Connie was only allowed a suit-case, also. But  she had sent on a trunk
to  her father, who was  going by train. No use taking a  car to Venice. And
Italy much  too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably by train.
He had just come down from Scotland.
     So, like a demure arcadian  field-marshal, Hilda arranged  the material
part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting.
     `But Hilda!' said  Connie,  a little frightened.  `I want to stay  near
here tonight. Not here: near here!'
     Hilda fixed her sister with grey, inscrutable eyes. She seemed so calm:
and she was so often furious.
     `Where, near here?' she asked softly.
     `Well, you know I love somebody, don't you?'
     `I gathered there was something.'
     `Well he  lives near here, and I want to spend this last night with him
must! I've promised.'
     Connie became insistent.
     Hilda bent her Minerva-like head in silence. Then she looked up.
     `Do you want to tell me who he is?' she said.
     `He's our game-keeper,' faltered  Connie, and she flushed vividly, like
a shamed child.
     `Connie!' said Hilda, lifting her nose slightly with disgust: a she had
from her mother.
     `I  know: but  he's lovely  really.  He really understands tenderness,'
said Connie, trying to apologize for him.
     Hilda, like a ruddy, rich-coloured  Athena, bowed her head and pondered
She was  really violently angry. But she dared not  show it, because Connie,
taking  after  her  father,  would  straight  away  become obstreperous  and
unmanageable.
     It  was true, Hilda did  not like Clifford: his cool  assurance that he
was somebody! She thought  he made use of Connie  shamefully and impudently.
She had hoped  her  sister would  leave him. But, being solid  Scotch middle
class, she loathed any `lowering' of oneself or the family. She looked up at
last.
     `You'll regret it,' she said,
     `I  shan't,' cried  Connie, flushed red.  `He's quite the exception.  I
really love him. He's lovely as a lover.'
     Hilda still pondered.
     `You'll get over him quite  soon,' she said, `and live to be ashamed of
yourself because of him.'
     `I shan't! I hope I'm going to have a child of his.'
     `Connie!' sa