Page 134 - lady-chatterlys-lover

contented people who fitted in nowhere?
In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to
the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the
sunshine was like life itself, warm and full.
’It’s amazing,’ said Connie, ‘how different one feels when
there’s a really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air
is half dead. People are killing the very air.’
’Do you think people are doing it?’ he asked.
’I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and
anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in the air.
I’m sure of it.’
’Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vi-
tality of the people?’ he said.
’No, it’s man that poisons the universe,’ she asserted.
’Fouls his own nest,’ remarked Clifford.
The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were
hanging pale gold, and in sunny places the wood-anemo-
nes were wide open, as if exclaiming with the joy of life, just
as good as in past days, when people could exclaim along
with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Connie
gathered a few for Clifford.
He took them and looked at them curiously.
’Thou still unravished bride of quietness,’ he quoted. ‘It
seems to fit flowers so much better than Greek vases.’
’Ravished is such a horrid word!’ she said. ‘It’s only peo-
ple who ravish things.’
’Oh, I don’t know...snails and things,’ he said.
’Even snails only eat them, and bees don’t ravish.’
She was angry with him, turning everything into words.

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