Page 370 - women-in-love

preacher.’
The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and
unheeding of her.
‘I don’t mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,’
he said. ‘I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Diony-
sic or any other. It’s like going round in a squirrel cage. I
want you not to care about yourself, just to be there and not
to care about yourself, not to insist—be glad and sure and
indifferent.’
‘Who insists?’ she mocked. ‘Who is it that keeps on in-
sisting? It isn’t ME!’
There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He
was silent for some time.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘While ever either of us insists to the
other, we are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn’t
come.’
They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the
bank. The night was white around them, they were in the
darkness, barely conscious.
Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She
put her hand tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly
and silently, in peace.
‘Do you really love me?’ she said.
He laughed.
‘I call that your war-cry,’ he replied, amused.
‘Why!’ she cried, amused and really wondering.
‘Your insistence—Your war-cry—‘A Brangwen, A Bran-
gwen’—an old battle-cry. Yours is, ‘Do you love me? Yield
knave, or die.‘‘

370 Women in Love