y much?'
     `I minded, as I always shall mind. And I knew I was a fool to mind.'
     `Did you feel like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail? Clifford said
you felt like that.'
     He looked at her. It was cruel of her at that moment: for his pride had
suffered bitterly.
     `I suppose I did,' he said.
     She never knew the fierce bitterness with which he resented insult.
     There was a long pause.
     `And did you miss me?' she asked.
     `I was glad you were out of it.'
     Again there was a pause.
     `But did people believe about you and me?' she asked.
     `No! I don't think so for a moment.'
     `Did Clifford?'
     `I  should  say not.  He  put it  off without  thinking  about  it. But
naturally it made him want to see the last of me.'
     `I'm going to have a child.'
     The expression died utterly out of his face, out of his whole body.  He
looked at  her with  darkened eyes, whose look she could  not understand  at
all: like some dark-flamed spirit looking at her.
     `Say  you're  glad!' she pleaded,  groping for his hand. And she  saw a
certain exultance spring  up  in him. But it  was netted down  by things she
could not understand.
     `It's the future,' he said.
     `But aren't you glad?' she persisted.
     `I have such a terrible mistrust of the future.'
     `But you needn't be troubled by any responsibility. Clifford would have
it as his own, he'd be glad.'
     She saw him go pale, and recoil under this. He did not answer.
     `Shall I go back to Clifford and put a little baronet into Wragby?' she
asked.
     He looked at her, pale and very remote.  The ugly little grin flickered
on his face.
     `You wouldn't have to tell him who the father was?'
     `Oh!' she said; `he'd take it even then, if I wanted him to.'
     He thought for a time.
     `Ay!' he said at last, to himself. `I suppose he would.'
     There was silence. A big gulf was between them.
     `But you don't want me to go back to Clifford, do you?' she asked him.
     `What do you want yourself?' he replied.
     `I want to live with you,' she said simply.
     In spite of himself,  little flames  ran over his belly as he heard her
say it, and he dropped his head. Then he looked up  at her again, with those
haunted eyes.
     `If it's worth it to you,' he said. `I've got nothing.'
     `You've got more than most men. Come, you know it,' she said.
     `In  one  way, I know it.' He was  silent for a time, thinking. Then he
resumed: `They used to  say I had too much of the woman in me. But  it's not
that.  I'm  not a woman not  because  I don't  want  to shoot birds, neither
because I don't want to make money, or  get on.  I could have got  on in the
army, easily, but I didn't like  the army. Though I could manage the men all
right: they liked me and they had a bit of a holy fear of me when I got mad.
No, it was stupid, dead-handed higher  authority  that  made the  army dead:
absolutely fool-dead. I like  men, and men  like me. But  I  can't stand the
twaddling bossy impudence  of  the people  who  run this world. That's why I
can't get on. I  hate  the impudence of  money, and I  hate the impudence of
class. So in the world as it is, what have I to offer a woman?'
     `But why offer anything? It's not a bargain. It's just that we love one
another,' she said.
     `Nay, nay! It's more than that. Living is moving and moving on. My life
won't go down  the proper  gutters, it just won't. So  I'm a bit of  a waste
ticket by myself. And I've  no business to take a woman into my life, unless
my  life does  something and gets  somewhere, inwardly at  least, to keep us
both fresh. A man must offer a woman some meaning in his life, if it's going
to be an  isolated life, and if she's a genuine woman. I can't be just  your
male concubine.'
     `Why not?' she said.
     `Why, because I can't. And you would soon hate it.'
     `As if you couldn't trust me,' she said.
     The grin flickered on his face.
     `The money is yours, the position is yours, the decisions will lie with
you. I'm not just my Lady's fucker, after all.'
     `What else are you?'
     `You  may well  ask.  It no  doubt is  invisible. Yet  I'm something to
myself at least. I can see the point of my own existence, though I can quite
understand nobody else's seeing it.'
     `And will your existence have less point, if you live with me?'
     He paused a long time before replying:
     `It might.'
     She too stayed to think about it.
     `And what is the point of your existence?'
     `I  tell  you,  it's invisible. I  don't believe in the  world, not  in
money, nor in advancement, nor in the future of our civilization. If there's
got to be a  future for humanity, there'll have to be a very big change from
what now is.'
     `And what will the real future have to be like?'
     `God  knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of
rage. But what it really amounts to, I don't know.'
     `Shall I tell you?' she said, looking into his face. `Shall I  tell you
what you have  that other men  don't have,  and that will  make the  future?
Shall I tell you?'
     `Tell me then,' he replied.
     `It's  the courage of your own tenderness, that's what it is: like when
you put your hand on my tail and say I've got a pretty tail.'
     The grin came flickering on his face.
     `That!' he said.
     Then he sat thinking.
     `Ay!' he said.  `You're right.  It's that really. It's that all the way
through. I knew it with the men. I had to be in touch with them, physically,
and not go back on it. I had  to be bodily aware of them and a bit tender to
them, even if I put em through hell. It's a question of awareness, as Buddha
said.  But  even  he  fought  shy of the  bodily awareness, and that natural
physical tenderness, which  is the best, even between men; in a proper manly
way. Makes 'em really manly, not so  monkeyish. Ay! it's tenderness, really;
it's cunt-awareness. Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And
it's touch we're afraid of. We're only half-conscious, and half alive. We've
got  to come alive and aware.  Especially the  English have got to get  into
touch with  one another, a  bit delicate and  a  bit tender. It's our crying
need.'
     She looked at him.
     `Then why are you afraid of me?' she said.
     He looked at her a long time before he answered.
     `It's the money, really, and the position. It's the world in you.'
     `But isn't there tenderness in me?' she said wistfully.
     He looked down at her, with darkened, abstract eyes.
     `Ay! It comes an' goes, like in me.'
     `But can't  you  trust  it  between  you  and  me?' she  asked,  gazing
anxiously at him.
     She saw his  face all softening down, losing  its  armour. `Maybe!'  he
said. They were both silent.
     `I want you  to hold me in your arms,' she said. `I want you to tell me
you are glad we are having a child.'
     She  looked so lovely and warm and wistful, his  bowels stirred towards
her.
     `I  suppose  we can go to my room,' he  said.  `Though  it's scandalous
again.'
     But  she  saw the forgetfulness of the world coming over him again, his
face taking the soft, pure look of tender passion.
     They walked  by the remoter  streets  to Coburg Square, where  he had a
room at the top of the house, an attic room where he cooked for himself on a
gas ring. It was small, but decent and tidy.
     She took off her things, and  made him  do the same. She was  lovely in
the soft first flush of her pregnancy.
     `I ought to leave you alone,' he said.
     `No!' she said. `Love  me! Love me, and say you'll keep me.  Say you'll
keep me! Say you'll never let me go, to the world nor to anybody.'
     She crept close  against him,  clinging  fast to his thin, strong naked
body, the only home she had ever known.
     `Then I'll keep thee,' he said. `If tha wants it, then I'll keep thee.'
     He held her round and fast.
     `And say you're glad about the child,' she repeated.
     `Kiss it! Kiss my womb and say you're glad it's there.'
     But that was more difficult for him.
     `I've a dread of puttin' children i' th' world,' he said.  `I've such a
dread o' th' future for 'em.'
     `But you've  put  it into me. Be  tender to  it,  and that  will be its
future already. Kiss it!'
     He  quivered,  because it was true. `Be tender to it,  and that will be
its  future.'---At that moment he felt a sheer love for the woman. He kissed
her belly and her mound of Venus,  to kiss close to the womb  and the foetus
within the womb.
     `Oh, you love me! You love me!' she said, in a little cry  like one  of
her blind,  inarticulate love  cries. And he went in  to her softly, feeling
the stream of tenderness flowing in release  from  his  bowels to  hers, the
bowels of compassion kindled between them.
     And he realized  as he went into her that  this was the thing he had to
do, to e into tender touch,  without losing his pride  or his dignity or his
integrity as a man. After all, if she  had money and means, and he had none,
he should  be too proud and honourable to hold back his  tenderness from her
on that  account. `I stand for  the touch of bodily awareness  between human
beings,'  he said to  himself, `and  the touch of tenderness. And she  is my
mate.  And  it is a battle  against  the money, and  the  machine,  and  the
insentient  ideal monkeyishness of the  world. And she will stand  behind me
there.  Thank  God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman who is  with
me, and tender  and aware of me.  Thank  God  she's not a bully, nor a fool.
Thank God she's a  tender, aware woman.' And as  his seed sprang in her, his
soul sprang  towards  her  too,  in the  creative act that is far more  than
procreative.
     She was quite determined  now that there should  be  no parting between
him and her. But the ways and means were still to settle.
     `Did you hate Bertha Coutts?' she asked him.
     `Don't talk to me about her.'
     `Yes! You must let me. Because once you liked her. And once you were as
intimate  with her as you are  with  me.  So  you have  to tell me. Isn't it
rather terrible, when you've been intimate with her, to hate her so?  Why is
it?'
     `I don't know. She  sort  of  kept her  will ready  against me, always,
always: her ghastly female will: her freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that
ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she  always  kept her freedom against
me, like vitriol in my face.'
     `But she's not free of you even now. Does she still love you?'
     `No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage,
she must try to bully me.'
     `But she must have loved you.'
     `No!  Well, in  specks she did.  She was drawn to me.  And I think even
that she hated. She  loved me in moments. But  she  always took it back, and
started bullying.  Her deepest  desire was to bully  me,  and there  was  no
altering her. Her will was wrong, from the first.'
     `But perhaps  she felt you didn't really love  her,  and  she wanted to
make you.'
     `My God, it was bloody making.'
     `But you didn't really love her, did you? You did her that wrong.'
     `How could  I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always
ripped  me  up. No, don't let's talk of it. It was a doom, that was. And she
was a doomed woman. This  last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat,
if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman!  If
only I  could  have shot her, and  ended  the whole  misery! It ought  to be
allowed. When a woman  gets  absolutely possessed by her  own will,  her own
will set  against everything, then it's fearful, and  she should be  shot at
last.'
     `And shouldn't men be shot at last, if they get  possessed by their own
will?'
     `Ay!---the same! But I must get free of her,  or she'll be at me again.
I wanted to tell you. I must get  a divorce if I possibly can. So we must be
careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never, never could
stand it if she came down on me and you.'
     Connie pondered this.
     `Then we can't be together?' she said.
     `Not  for six months or so.  But  I think my divorce will go through in
September; then till March.'
     `But the baby will probably be born at the end of February,' she said.
     He was silent.
     `I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead,' he said.
     `It's not being very tender to them,' she said.
     `Tender to them? Yea, even then  the tenderest  thing you could do  for
them,  perhaps,  would  be to give them  death. They can't  live!  They only
frustrate life. Their  souls are awful inside  them. Death ought to be sweet
to them. And I ought to be allowed to shoot them.'
     `But you wouldn't do it,' she said.
     `I would though! and with less qualms than  I shoot a weasel. It anyhow
has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I'd shoot them.'
     `Then perhaps it is just as well you daren't.'
     `Well.'
     Connie had now plenty to think of. It  was evident he wanted absolutely
to be free of  Bertha Coutts. And she felt he was right. The last attack had
been too grim.---This meant her living alone, till spring. Perhaps she could
get divorced  from Clifford.  But how? If Mellors were named, then there was
an end to his divorce. How loathsome! Couldn't one go right away, to the far
ends of the earth, and be free from it all?
     One  could not. The  far ends of  the  world are not  five minutes from
Charing Cross, nowadays. While the wireless is active, there are no far ends
of the  earth.  Kings of Dahomey  and Lamas of Tibet listen in to London and
New York.
     Patience!  Patience!  The world  is a  vast  and  ghastly intricacy  of
mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not to get mangled by it.
     Connie confided in her father.
     `You see, Father, he was Clifford's game-keeper: but he was  an officer
in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E.  Florence, who preferred
to become a private soldier again.'
     Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism
of  the famous  C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the
humility. It looked just like  the sort of conceit  the knight most loathed,
the conceit of self-abasement.
     `Where did your game-keeper spring from?' asked Sir Malcolm irritably.
     `He  was   a   collier's  son   in   Tevershall.  But  he's  absolutely
presentable.'
     The knighted artist became more angry.
     `Looks to  me like a  gold-digger,' he said.  `And you're a pretty easy
gold-mine, apparently.'
     `No, Father, it's not like that. You'd know if you saw him. He's a man.
Clifford always detested him for not being humble.'
     `Apparently he had a good instinct, for once.'
     What Sir  Malcolm  could not bear  was  the scandal  of  his daughter's
having  an intrigue  with a  game-keeper. He  did  not mind the intrigue: he
minded the scandal.
     `I care nothing about the fellow. He's evidently been able to get round
you all right. But, by God, think of all the talk. Think of your step-mother
how she'll take it!'
     `I  know,'  said  Connie.  `Talk is beastly:  especially if you live in
society.  And  he wants so much to get his  own divorce.  I thought we might
perhaps say  it was  another  man's child, and not  mention Mellors' name at
all.'
     `Another man's! What other man's?'
     `Perhaps Duncan Forbes. He has been our friend all his life.'
     `And he's a fairly well-known artist. And he's fond of me.'
     `Well I'm damned! Poor Duncan! And what's he going to get out of it?'
     `I don't know. But he might rather like it, even.'
     `He might, might he?  Well, he's  a funny  man if he does.  Why, you've
never even had an affair with him, have you?'
     `No! But he doesn't really  want  it. He  only loves me to be near him,
but not to touch him.'
     `My God, what a generation!'
     `He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only
I never wanted to.'
     `God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything.'
     `Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?'
     `My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!'
     `I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?'
     `Contriving,  conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes  a man think he's
lived too long.'
     `Come,  Father, if  you  haven't  done  a good deal of  contriving  and
conniving in your time, you may talk.'
     `But it was different, I assure you.'
     `It's always different.'
     Hilda arrived, also furious when she heard of the new developments. And
she also simply could not stand the  thought  of a public  scandal about her
sister and a game-keeper. Too, too humiliating!
     `Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and
have no scandal?' said Connie.
     But that was no good. The scandal would come out  just the same. And if
Connie  was going  with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was
Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over.
     `But will you see him, Father?'
     Poor Sir  Malcolm! he was by no  means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he
was still less keen. Yet  the meeting took  place: a lunch in a private room
at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down.
     Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whisky, Mellors also drank. And they
talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed.
     This  lasted  during the  meal.  Only  when  coffee was served, and the
waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily:
     `Well, young man, and what about my daughter?'
     The grin flickered on Mellors' face.
     `Well, Sir, and what about her?'
     `You've got a baby in her all right.'
     `I have that honour!' grinned Mellors.
     `Honour, by God!' Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became
Scotch and lewd. `Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what?'
     `Good!'
     `I'll  bet it  was! Ha-ha! My daughter,  chip of the old block, what! I
never  went back on a good bit of  fucking, myself. Though  her mother,  oh,
holy saints!' He rolled his eyes to heaven. `But  you warmed her up, oh, you
warmed her up, I can see that. Ha-ha! My blood in her!  You set fire to  her
haystack all right.  Ha-ha-ha! I was jolly  glad of it, I can  tell you. She
needed it. Oh, she's a nice  girl, she's  a nice girl,  and  I knew she'd be
good going, if only some damned man would set her stack on fire! Ha-ha-ha! A
game-keeper, eh, my boy! Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Ha-ha! But now,
look here,  speaking seriously, what are we going  to do  about it? Speaking
seriously, you know!'
     Speaking seriously, they didn't get very far. Mellors, though a  little
tipsy,  was much  the  soberer  of  the  two.  He kept  the conversation  as
intelligent as possible: which isn't saying much.
     `So you're  a game-keeper! Oh, you're quite right! That sort of game is
worth a man's  while,  eh, what? The test of  a woman is when  you pinch her
bottom. You can tell just by the feel of her bottom if  she's going  to come
up all right. Ha-ha! I envy you, my boy. How old are you?'
     `Thirty-nine.'
     The knight lifted his eyebrows.
     `As much as that! Well, you've another good twenty  years, by  the look
of you. Oh, game-keeper or not, you're a good cock. I  can see that with one
eye shut. Not like that blasted  Clifford! A lily-livered hound with never a
fuck in  him, never  had. I  like you, my boy, I'll bet you've a good cod on
you; oh,  you're  a  bantam, I can see that. You're a fighter.  Game-keeper!
Ha-ha, by crikey, I wouldn't trust my game to you! But look here, seriously,
what are we going to do about it? The world's full of blasted old women.'
     Seriously, they didn't  do  anything about it, except establish the old
free-masonry of male sensuality between them.
     `And look here, my boy, if ever I can do anything for you, you can rely
on  me. Game-keeper! Christ,  but it's rich! I like it! Oh, I like it! Shows
the girl's  got spunk.  What? After all, you know,  she has her own  income,
moderate, moderate,  but above starvation. And I'll leave her what I've got.
By God,  I will. She deserves it for showing spunk, in a world of old women.
I've been struggling to  get  myself clear of the skirts  of  old  women for
seventy years, and  haven't  managed it yet. But you're the  man, I can  see
that.'
     `I'm  glad you think so.  They usually tell me,  in a sideways fashion,
that I'm the monkey.'
     `Oh, they would! My dear fellow, what could you be but a monkey, to all
the old women?'
     They parted most genially, and  Mellors  laughed inwardly all the  time
for the rest of the day.
     The following day  he had lunch with Connie and Hilda, at some discreet
place.
     `It's a very  great pity it's  such  an ugly situation all round,' said
Hilda.
     `I had a lot o' fun out of it,' said he.
     `I think  you might have avoided putting children into  the world until
you were both free to marry and have children.'
     `The Lord blew a bit too soon on the spark,' said he.
     `I think the Lord had  nothing to do  with it.  Of course,  Connie  has
enough money to keep you both, but the situation is unbearable.'
     `But then  you  don't have to bear  more than a  small corner of it, do
you?' said he.
     `If you'd been in her own class.'
     `Or if I'd been in a cage at the Zoo.'
     There was silence.
     `I think,' said Hilda, `it  will be best if she names quite another man
as co-respondent and you stay out of it altogether.'
     `But I thought I'd put my foot right in.'
     `I mean in the divorce proceedings.'
     He gazed  at her in  wonder. Connie had  not dared mention  the  Duncan
scheme to him.
     `I don't follow,' he said.
     `We   have  a  friend   who  would  probably  agree  to   be  named  as
co-respondent, so that your name need not appear,' said Hilda.
     `You mean a man?'
     `Of course!'
     `But she's got no other?'
     He looked in wonder at Connie.
     `No, no!' she said hastily. `Only that old friendship, quite simple, no
love.'
     `Then why should the fellow  take the blame? If he's had nothing out of
you?'
     `Some men are chivalrous and  don't only count  what they get  out of a
woman,' said Hilda.
     `One for me, eh? But who's the johnny?'
     `A friend  whom  we've  known since  we  were children in Scotland,  an
artist.'
     `Duncan  Forbes!' he said at once, for  Connie had talked  to him. `And
how would you shift the blame on to him?'
     `They could stay  together in some hotel, or she could even stay in his
apartment.'
     `Seems to me like a lot of fuss for nothing,' he said.
     `What else do you suggest?' said Hilda. `If your name appears, you will
get no divorce from  your wife, who is apparently quite an impossible person
to be mixed up with.'
     `All that!' he said grimly.
     There was a long silence.
     `We could go right away,' he said.
     `There is no right away for Connie,' said Hilda. `Clifford is  too well
known.'
     Again the silence of pure frustration.
     `The world  is what it is. If you  want to live together  without being
persecuted, you will have to marry. To marry, you both  have to be divorced.
So how are you both going about it?'
     He was silent for a long time.
     `How are you going about it for us?' he said.
     `We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as co-respondent: then we
must get Clifford to  divorce Connie: and you must go on  with your divorce,
and you must both keep apart till you are free.'
     `Sounds like a lunatic asylum.'
     `Possibly! And the world would look on you as lunatics: or worse.;
     `What is worse?'
     `Criminals, I suppose.'
     `Hope  I can  plunge  in  the dagger  a few more times  yet,' he  said,
grinning. Then he was silent, and angry.
     `Well!' he  said at last. `I agree to anything. The world  is a  raving
idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best. But you re  right. We
must rescue ourselves as best we can.'
     He looked in humiliation, anger, weariness and misery at Connie.
     `Ma lass!' he said. `The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail.'
     `Not if we don't let it,' she said.
     She minded this conniving against the world less than he did.
     Duncan,  when  approached,  also  insisted  on  seeing  the  delinquent
game-keeper, so there was a dinner, this time in his flat: the four of them.
Duncan was a rather  short, broad, dark-skinned, taciturn Hamlet of a fellow
with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of himself.  His art was
all tubes and valves and spirals and strange colours, ultra-modern, yet with
a certain  power, even  a  certain purity  of  form and  tone:  only Mellors
thought it cruel and repellent. He did not venture to say so, for Duncan was
almost  insane on the point of his art: it  was a personal cult,  a personal
religion with him.
     They were  looking at the pictures  in the  studio, and Duncan kept his
smallish brown eyes on the other man. He wanted to hear what the game-keeper
would say. He knew already Connie's and Hilda's opinions.
     `It  is like a pure bit of  murder,'  said Mellors at  last;  a  speech
Duncan by no means expected from a game-keeper.
     `And who is murdered?' asked Hilda, rather coldly and sneeringly.
     `Me! It murders all the bowels of compassion in a man.'
     A wave of pure  hate came out  of the  artist.  He  heard the  note  of
dislike in the  other man's voice, and the note of contempt. And  he himself
loathed the mention of bowels of compassion. Sickly sentiment!
     Mellors  stood   rather  tall  and  thin,  worn-looking,   gazing  with
flickering detachment that was something like  the dancing  of a moth on the
wing, at the pictures.
     `Perhaps  stupidity  is murdered; sentimental  stupidity,' sneered  the
artist.
     `Do you think so? I think all these tubes and corrugated vibrations are
stupid  enough  for anything, and  pretty sentimental.  They  show a  lot of
self-pity and an awful lot of nervous self-opinion, seems to me.'
     In another  wave of hate the artist's face looked  yellow. But  with  a
sort of silent hauteur he turned the pictures to the wall.
     `I think we may go to the dining-room,' he said. And they trailed  off,
dismally.
     After coffee, Duncan said:
     `I  don't at all mind posing as the father of Connie's child.  But only
on the condition  that she'll come and  pose as a model  for me. I've wanted
her  for years, and  she's  always refused.'  He uttered it  with  the  dark
finality of an inquisitor announcing an auto da fe.
     `Ah!' said Mellors. `You only do it on condition, then?'
     `Quite!  I only do it  on  that condition.' The artist tried to put the
utmost contempt of the other person  into his  speech.  He put  a little too
much.
     `Better have me  as a model at the same time,' said Mellors. `Better do
us  in  a  group, Vulcan and Venus under the  net of  art.  I used  to be  a
blacksmith, before I was a game-keeper.'
     `Thank you,' said the artist.  `I don't think Vulcan has a  figure that
interests me.'
     `Not even if it was tubified and titivated up?'
     There was no answer. The artist was too haughty for further words.
     It was a dismal party, in which the  artist henceforth steadily ignored
the presence of the other man, and talked only briefly, as if the words were
wrung out of the depths of his gloomy portentousness, to the women.
     `You didn't like him, but  he's better  than that, really. He's  really
kind,' Connie explained as they left.
     `He's a little black pup with a corrugated distemper,' said Mellors.
     `No, he wasn't nice today.'
     `And will you go and be a model to him?'
     `Oh, I don't really mind any more. He won't touch  me. And I don't mind
anything, if it paves the way to a life together for you and me.'
     `But he'll only shit on you on canvas.'
     `I don't care. He'll only be painting  his own  feelings for me, and  I
don't mind if he does that. I wouldn't have him touch me, not for  anything.
But  if he thinks he can  do anything  with his owlish arty staring, let him
stare.  He can make  as many empty  tubes and corrugations  out of me  as he
likes. It's his  funeral. He hated you for what  you said: that his tubified
art is sentimental and self-important. But of course it's true.'

        Chapter 19

     Dear Clifford,  I am afraid what  you foresaw has happened. I am really
in love with another man, and do  hope you will  divorce me. I am staying at
present  with Duncan in his flat. I told  you  he was at Venice with us. I'm
awfully unhappy for  your  sake:  but  do try to  take it quietly. You don't
really need  me any more, and  I can't  bear  to  come back  to Wragby.  I'm
awfully sorry. But do  try to forgive me, and divorce  me and  find  someone
better. I'm  not really the  right person  for you,  I am too  impatient and
selfish, I suppose. But I can't ever come back to live with you again. And I
feel so frightfully sorry  about it all, for your sake. But if you don't let
yourself get worked up, you'll see you won't mind so frightfully. You didn't
really care about me personally. So do forgive me and get rid of me.
     Clifford  was not inwardly surprised to get  this letter.  Inwardly, he
had known for a long time she was leaving him. But he had absolutely refused
any  outward admission of  it.  Therefore, outwardly, it  came  as  the most
terrible blow and shock to him, He had kept the surface of his confidence in
her quite serene.
     And  that  is how we are,  By strength  of will we cut  of  four  inner
intuitive knowledge  from  admitted consciousness.  This  causes a state  of
dread, or apprehension,  which makes the  blow ten times worse when it  does
fall.
     Clifford  was like a hysterical child. He  gave Mrs  Bolton  a terrible
shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.
     `Why, Sir Clifford, whatever's the matter?'
     No answer! She was  terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried and
felt his face, took his pulse.
     `Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!'
     No answer!
     `Oh dear,  oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr Carrington,
and Dr Lecky may as well run round straight away.'
     She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:
     `No!'
     She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank,  and like the
face of an idiot.
     `Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?'
     `Yes! I don't want him,' came the sepulchral voice.
     `Oh,   but  Sir  Clifford,   you're   ill,  and  I  daren't  take   the
responsibility. I must send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed.'
     A pause: then the hollow voice said:
     `I'm not ill. My  wife isn't  coming  back.'---It was as  if  an  image
spoke.
     `Not coming back? you mean her  ladyship?' Mrs  Bolton  moved  a little
nearer to  the bed. `Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship to
come back.'
     The image in the bed did not change, but  it pushed a letter  over  the
counterpane.
     `Read it!' said the sepulchral voice.
     `Why,  if it's  a letter  from  her  ladyship,  I'm sure  her  ladyship
wouldn't want me to read her letter  to  you, Sir Clifford. You  can tell me
what she says, if you wish.'
     `Read it!' repeated the voice.
     `Why, if  I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford,' she said. And she
read the letter.
     `Well,  I am surprised  at her ladyship,' she  said.  `She  promised so
faithfully she'd come back!'
     The  face  in  the  bed seemed to deepen its  expression  of wild,  but
motionless distraction.  Mrs Bolton looked  at it and  was worried. She knew
what she was up against: male hysteria.  She had not nursed soldiers without
learning something about that very unpleasant disease.
     She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any  man in his senses must
have known his wife was in love with  somebody else, and was going to  leave
him.  Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of  it,
only he wouldn't admit it to  himself.  If  he  would have admitted  it, and
prepared  himself  for it:  or if he  would  have admitted it,  and actively
struggled with his wife against it: that  would have been acting like a man.
But no! he knew it, and all the time tried  to kid himself it wasn't  so. He
felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on
him.  This state of falsity  had  now  brought on that crisis of falsity and
dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. `It  comes', she thought
to herself, hating him a  little, `because he always thinks of himself. He's
so wrapped up in his own  immortal  self, that when he does get a shock he's
like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!'
     But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull
him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood  and his pride would only make him
worse:  for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would  only
squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated.
     The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson,
he must weep or he must die.
     So Mrs  Bolton began to weep first. She covered  her face with her hand
and burst into little  wild sobs. `I would  never  have  believed it of  her
ladyship, I wouldn't!' she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and
sense  of woe, and weeping  the tears  of her own bitter chagrin.  Once  she
started, her weeping was  genuine enough, for she had had something  to weep
for.
     Clifford thought of the way  he had been betrayed  by the woman Connie,
and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his
cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears
running over his  blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little
handkerchief, and leaned towards him.
     `Now, don't  you fret, Sir Clifford!' she said, in a luxury of emotion.
`Now, don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!'
     His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent  sobbing, and
the tears  ran quicker down his face. She  laid her hand on his arm, and her
own tears fell again. Again the shiver went  through him, like a convulsion,
and she laid her arm round  his shoulder. `There, there! There, there! Don't
you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!' she moaned to him, while her own
tears  fell. And  she drew him to her,  and  held  her  arms round his great
shoulders,  while he  laid his face  on her  bosom  and  sobbed, shaking and
hulking  his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked  his dusky-blond hair
and said: `There!  There! There!  There then! There  then!  Never you  mind!
Never you mind, then!'
     And  he put his arms round her  and clung to her like  a child, wetting
the bib of her  starched white  apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton
dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.
     So at  length she kissed him, and rocked him  on her  bosom, and in her
heart  she  said  to  herself:  `Oh,  Sir  Clifford!  Oh,  high  and  mighty
Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!' And finally  he even went to
sleep, like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own  room, where
she  laughed  and cried  at  once, with a hysteria  of  her own. It  was  so
ridiculous!  It was so awful! Such  a come-down! So shameful! And it  was so
upsetting as well.
     After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would hold
her h,  and rest  his head  on her breast, and when  she once lightly kissed
him,  he said! `Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!' And when she sponged his great
blond body, he would say the same! `Do kiss me!' and she would  lightly kiss
his body, anywhere, half in mockery.
     And he  lay with  a  queer, blank face  like a child, with a bit of the
wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in
a relaxation  of  madonna-worship. It  was sheer  relaxation  on  his  part,
letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was
really perverse. And then he would put his hand into  her bosom and feel her
breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of perversity, of being
a child when he was a man.
     Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and  hated it.
Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him. And they drew into a closer physical
intimacy, an  intimacy of perversity, when he was a  child stricken with  an
apparent  candour  and  an  apparent  wonderment, that  looked almost like a
religious  exaltation:  the  perverse  and literal rendering of:  `except ye
become again as a  little child'.---While she  was the Magna Mater, full  of
power and  potency, having  the great blond child-man under her will and her
stroke entirely.
     The curious thing was that when this  child-man, which Clifford was now
and which he had been  becoming for years,  emerged into the world,  it  was
much sharper  and keener than the  real  man he used to  be.  This perverted
child-man was now a real business-man; when it was a question of affairs, he
was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel.
When  he  was  out among men,  seeking his own ends,  and `making good'  his
colliery workings,  he  had  an almost uncanny  shrewdness, hardness,  and a
straight  sharp punch. It was as if  his very  passivity and prostitution to
the Magna Mater gave him insight into material  business affairs,  and  lent
him  a certain remarkable inhuman  force. The  wallowing in private emotion,
the utter  abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second  nature,
cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In business he was quite inhuman.
     And in this Mrs  Bolton triumphed. `How he's getting on!' she would say
to herself in pride. `And that's  my doing! My word, he'd never have got  on
like  this with Lady Chatterley.  She was not the one  to put a man forward.
She wanted too much for herself.'
     At the same time, in  some  corner  of  her weird female soul,  how she
despised him and hated him!  He was to her the fallen  beast,  the squirming
monster.  And while she aided and abetted  him  all  she  could, away in the
remotest  corner  of her ancient  healthy womanhood she  despised him with a
savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better than he.
     His behaviour with regard to  Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing
her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to  Wragby. On this point he
was  finally  and  absolutely fixed.  Connie  had  promised to  come back to
Wragby, faithfully.
     `But is it any use?' said Mrs Bolton. `Can't you let her go, and be rid
of her?'
     `No! She said she was coming back, and she's got to come.'
     Mrs Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.
     I needn't tell you what effect your  letter has had on me [he  wrote to
Connie to London].  Perhaps  you  can imagine it if you try, though no doubt
you won't trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.
     I can only  say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at
Wragby, before I can do anything.  You promised faithfully  to come back  to
Wragby,  and  I  hold you  to the  promise.  I  don't  believe anything  nor
understand  anything  until  I   see  you  personally,   here  under  normal
circumstances.  I  needn't tell you that nobody here  suspects anything,  so
your  return  would be quite normal.  Then if you feel, after we have talked
things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to
terms.
     Connie showed this letter to Mellors.
     `He wants to  begin his  revenge on you,' he said,  handing the  letter
back.
     Connie  was silent.  She was  somewhat  surprised  to find that she was
afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of him  as
if he were evil and dangerous.
     `What shall I do?' she said.
     `Nothing, if you don't want to do anything.'
     She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered:
     If you don't  come back to  Wragby now, I shall  consider that you  are
coming back one day, and act accordingly.  I  shall just go on the same, and
wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years.
     She was frightened.  This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had no
doubt  he meant what he said. He would not  divorce her, and the child would
be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its illegitimacy.
     After a time  of  worry  and  harassment, she decided  to go to Wragby.
Hilda would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied:
     I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not  deity her the door. I
have