Page 369 - women-in-love

serve me. You only want yourself.’
A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: ‘You
don’t want to serve me.’ All the paradisal disappeared from
him.
‘No,’ he said, irritated, ‘I don’t want to serve you, because
there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve,
is nothing, mere nothing. It isn’t even you, it is your mere
female quality. And I wouldn’t give a straw for your female
ego—it’s a rag doll.’
‘Ha!’ she laughed in mockery. ‘That’s all you think of me,
is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love me.’
She rose in anger, to go home.
You want the paradisal unknowing,’ she said, turning
round on him as he still sat half-visible in the shadow. ‘I
know what that means, thank you. You want me to be your
thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to say for
myself. You want me to be a mere THING for you! No thank
you! IF you want that, there are plenty of women who will
give it to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down
for you to walk over them—GO to them then, if that’s what
you want—go to them.’
‘No,’ he said, outspoken with anger. ‘I want you to drop
your assertive WILL, your frightened apprehensive self-in-
sistence, that is what I want. I want you to trust yourself so
implicitly, that you can let yourself go.’
‘Let myself go!’ she re-echoed in mockery. ‘I can let my-
self go, easily enough. It is you who can’t let yourself go, it is
you who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treasure.
YOU—YOU are the Sunday school teacher—YOU—you

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