Page 161 - lady-chatterlys-lover

She was not even free, for Clifford must have her there.
He seemed to have a nervous terror that she should leave
him. The curious pulpy part of him, the emotional and hu-
manly-individual part, depended on her with terror, like a
child, almost like an idiot. She must be there, there at Wrag-
by, a Lady Chatterley, his wife. Otherwise he would be lost
like an idiot on a moor.
This amazing dependence Connie realized with a sort
of horror. She heard him with his pit managers, with the
members of his Board, with young scientists, and she was
amazed at his shrewd insight into things, his power, his un-
canny material power over what is called practical men. He
had become a practical man himself and an amazingly as-
tute and powerful one, a master. Connie attributed it to Mrs
Bolton’s influence upon him, just at the crisis in his life.
But this astute and practical man was almost an idiot
when left alone to his own emotional life. He worshipped
Connie. She was his wife, a higher being, and he worshipped
her with a queer, craven idolatry, like a savage, a worship
based on enormous fear, and even hate of the power of the
idol, the dread idol. All he wanted was for Connie to swear,
to swear not to leave him, not to give him away.
’Clifford,’ she said to him—but this was after she had the
key to the hut—’Would you really like me to have a child
one day?’
He looked at her with a furtive apprehension in his rath-
er prominent pale eyes.
’I shouldn’t mind, if it made no difference between us,’
he said.

1 0 Lady Chatterly’s Lover