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well: she was perfectly indifferent to him. If he hadn’t been a
fool he would have pretended to believe her story; he ought
to have had the strength to conceal his disappointment
and the self-control to master his temper. He could not tell
why he loved her. He had read of the idealisation that takes
place in love, but he saw her exactly as she was. She was not
amusing or clever, her mind was common; she had a vul-
gar shrewdness which revolted him, she had no gentleness
nor softness. As she would have put it herself, she was on
the make. What aroused her admiration was a clever trick
played on an unsuspecting person; to ‘do’ somebody always
gave her satisfaction. Philip laughed savagely as he thought
of her gentility and the refinement with which she ate her
food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her limited
vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and
she scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of trou-
sers but referred to them as nether garments; she thought
it slightly indelicate to blow her nose and did it in a depre-
cating way. She was dreadfully anaemic and suffered from
the dyspepsia which accompanies that ailing. Philip was re-
pelled by her flat breast and narrow hips, and he hated the
vulgar way in which she did her hair. He loathed and de-
spised himself for loving her.
The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just as he
had felt sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at school.
He had struggled against the superior strength till his own
strength was gone, and he was rendered quite powerless—
he remembered the peculiar languor he had felt in his limbs,
almost as though he were paralysed—so that he could not

Of Human Bondage