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astounding the ingenuity and the almost uncanny clever-
ness of the modern technical mind, as if really the devil
himself had lent fiend’s wits to the technical scientists of in-
dustry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature,
poor emotional half-witted stuff, was this technical science
of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, in-
spired to discoveries, and fighting to carry them out. In this
activity, men were beyond atty mental age calculable. But
Clifford knew that when it did come to the emotional and
human life, these self-made men were of a mental age of
about thirteen, feeble boys. The discrepancy was enormous
and appalling.
But let that be. Let man slide down to general idiocy in
the emotional and ‘human’ mind, Clifford did not care. Let
all that go hang. He was interested in the technicalities of
modern coal-mining, and in pulling Tevershall out of the
hole.
He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put
the general manager, and the overhead manager, and the
underground manager, and the engineers through a mill
they had never dreamed of. Power! He felt a new sense of
power flowing through him: power over all these men, over
the hundreds and hundreds of colliers. He was finding out:
and he was getting things into his grip.
And he seemed verily to be re-born. NOW life came into
him! He had been gradually dying, with Connie, in the iso-
lated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now
let all that go. Let it sleep. He simply felt life rush into him
out of the coal, out of the pit. The very stale air of the col-

1 Lady Chatterly’s Lover