Page 374 - lady-chatterlys-lover

Chapter 17

You see, Hilda,’ said Connie after lunch, when they were
’nearing London, ‘you have never known either real tender-
ness or real sensuality: and if you do know them, with the
same person, it makes a great difference.’
’For mercy’s sake don’t brag about your experiences!’
said Hilda. ‘I’ve never met the man yet who was capable of
intimacy with a woman, giving himself up to her. That was
what I wanted. I’m not keen on their self-satisfied tender-
ness, and their sensuality. I’m not content to be any man’s
little petsy-wetsy, nor his CHAIR · PLAISIR either. I want-
ed a complete intimacy, and I didn’t get it. That’s enough
for me.
Connie pondered this. Complete intimacy! She supposed
that meant revealing everything concerning yourself to
the other person, and his revealing everything concerning
himself. But that was a bore. And all that weary self-con-
sciousness between a man and a woman! a disease!
’I think you’re too conscious of yourself all the time, with
everybody,’ she said to her sister.
’I hope at least I haven’t a slave nature,’ said Hilda.
’But perhaps you have! Perhaps you are a slave to your
own idea of yourself.’
Hilda drove in silence for some time after this piece of
unheard of insolence from that chit Connie.