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ing there. And her belly had lost the fresh, round gleam it
had had when she was young, in the days of her German
boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was young and
expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going
slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her
thighs, too, they used to look so quick and glimpsy in their
female roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack,
meaningless.
Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque,
so much insignificant substance. It made her feel immense-
ly depressed and hopeless. What hope was there? She was
old, old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and sparkle in the
flesh. Old through neglect and denial, yes, denial. Fashion-
able women kept their bodies bright like delicate porcelain,
by external attention. There was nothing inside the porce-
lain; but she was not even as bright as that. The mental life!
Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury, the swindle!
She looked in the other mirror’s reflection at her back,
her waist, her loins. She was getting thinner, but to her it
was not becoming. The crumple of her waist at the back, as
she bent back to look, was a little weary; and it used to be
so gay-looking. And the longish slope of her haunches and
her buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of richness.
Gone! Only the German boy had loved it, and he was ten
years dead, very nearly. How time went by! Ten years dead,
and she was only twenty-seven. The healthy boy with his
fresh, clumsy sensuality that she had then been so scornful
of! Where would she find it now? It was gone out of men.
They had their pathetic, two-seconds spasms like Michaelis;

100 Lady Chatterly’s Lover