Page 318 - lady-chatterlys-lover

teenth.
’Seventeenth!’ he said. ‘And when will you be back?’
’By the twentieth of July at the latest.’
’Yes! the twentieth of July.’
Strangely and blankly he looked at her, with the vague-
ness of a child, but with the queer blank cunning of an old
man.
’You won’t let me down, now, will you?’ he said.
’How?’
’While you’re away, I mean, you’re sure to come back?’
’I’m as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come
back.’
’Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!’
He looked at her so strangely.
Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He
wanted her to go, positively, to have her little adventures
and perhaps come home pregnant, and all that. At the same
time, he was afraid of her going.
She was quivering, watching her real opportunity for
leaving him altogether, waiting till the time, herself himself
should be ripe.
She sat and talked to the keeper of her going abroad.
’And then when I come back,’ she said, ‘I can tell Clifford
I must leave him. And you and I can go away. They never
need even know it is you. We can go to another country,
shall we? To Africa or Australia. Shall we?’
She was quite thrilled by her plan.
’You’ve never been to the Colonies, have you?’ he asked
her.

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