Page 194 - lady-chatterlys-lover

’Giving me the slip, like?’ he said, with a faint ironic
smile. ‘No! No. Not that. Only—’
’Why, what else?’ he said. And he stepped up to her and
put his arms around her. She felt the front of his body ter-
ribly near to her, and alive.
’Oh, not now, not now,’ she cried, trying to push him
away.
’Why not? It’s only six o’clock. You’ve got half an hour.
Nay! Nay! I want you.’
He held her fast and she felt his urgency. Her old instinct
was to fight for her freedom. But something else in her was
strange and inert and heavy. His body was urgent against
her, and she hadn’t the heart any more to fight.
He looked around.
’Come—come here! Through here,’ he said, looking pen-
etratingly into the dense fir-trees, that were young and not
more than half-grown.
He looked back at her. She saw his eyes, tense and bril-
liant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange
weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giv-
ing up.
He led her through the wall of prickly trees, that were
difficult to come through, to a place where was a little space
and a pile of dead boughs. He threw one or two dry ones
down, put his coat and waistcoat over them, and she had to
lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal,
while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches,
watching her with haunted eyes. But still he was provident—
he made her lie properly, properly. Yet he broke the band of

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