Page 660 - women-in-love

seemed to him he was degraded at the very quick, made of
no account.
‘You mean you don’t want me?’ he said.
‘You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you,
so little fineness. You are so crude. You break me—you only
waste me—it is horrible to me.’
‘Horrible to you?’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Don’t you think I might have a room to myself, now
Ursula has gone? You can say you want a dressing room.’
‘You do as you like—you can leave altogether if you like,’
he managed to articulate.
‘Yes, I know that,’ she replied. ‘So can you. You can leave
me whenever you like—without notice even.’
The great tides of darkness were swinging across his
mind, he could hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness
overcame him, he felt he must lie on the floor. Dropping
off his clothes, he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly
overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plung-
ing as if he were lying upon a black, giddy sea. He lay still
in this strange, horrific reeling for some time, purely un-
conscious.
At length she slipped from her own bed and came over
to him. He remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but
unconscious.
She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body,
and laid her cheek against his hard shoulder.
‘Gerald,’ she whispered. ‘Gerald.’
There was no change in him. She caught him against her.
She pressed her breasts against his shoulders, she kissed his

660 Women in Love