Page 344 - lady-chatterlys-lover

was listening in the next room, heard in sheer admiration.
To think a woman could carry it off so naturally!
’And suppose he’d come while you were running about
in the rain with nothing on, like a maniac?’
’I suppose he’d have had the fright of his life, and cleared
out as fast as he could.’
Clifford still stared at her transfixed. What he thought
in his under-consciousness he would never know. And he
was too much taken aback to form one clear thought in his
upper consciousness. He just simply accepted what she said,
in a sort of blank. And he admired her. He could not help
admiring her. She looked so flushed and handsome and
smooth: love smooth.
’At least,’ he said, subsiding, ‘you’ll be lucky if you’ve got
off without a severe cold.’
’Oh, I haven’t got a cold,’ she replied. She was thinking to
herself of the other man’s words: Tha’s got the nicest wom-
an’s arse of anybody! She wished, she dearly wished she
could tell Clifford that this had been said her, during the fa-
mous thunderstorm. However! She bore herself rather like
an offended queen, and went upstairs to change.
That evening, Clifford wanted to be nice to her. He was
reading one of the latest scientific-religious books: he had
a streak of a spurious sort of religion in him, and was ego-
centrically concerned with the future of his own ego. It was
like his habit to make conversation to Connie about some
book, since the conversation between them had to be made,
almost chemically. They had almost chemically to concoct
it in their heads.