Page 678 - women-in-love

maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you creep
after.’
She stood over against the window, listening. Then she
turned round.
‘Do you?’ she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice.
‘Do you want to know what it is in him? It’s because he has
some understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid.
That’s why it is.’
A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald’s
face.
‘But what understanding is it?’ he said. ‘The understand-
ing of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should
you crawl abject before the understanding of a flea?’
There passed through Gudrun’s mind Blake’s representa-
tion of the soul of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake
was a clown too. But it was necessary to answer Gerald.
‘Don’t you think the understanding of a flea is more in-
teresting than the understanding of a fool?’ she asked.
‘A fool!’ he repeated.
‘A fool, a conceited fool—a Dummkopf,’ she replied, add-
ing the German word.
‘Do you call me a fool?’ he replied. ‘Well, wouldn’t I rath-
er be the fool I am, than that flea downstairs?’
She looked at him. A certain blunt, blind stupidity in
him palled on her soul, limiting her.
‘You give yourself away by that last,’ she said.
He sat and wondered.
‘I shall go away soon,’ he said.
She turned on him.

678 Women in Love