Page 413 - lady-chatterlys-lover

’Kiss it! Kiss my womb and say you’re glad it’s there.’
But that was more difficult for him.
’I’ve a dread of puttin’ children i’ th’ world,’ he said. ‘I’ve
such a dread o’ th’ future for ‘em.’
’But you’ve put it into me. Be tender to it, and that will be
its future already. Kiss it!’
He quivered, because it was true. ‘Be tender to it, and
that will be its future.’—At that moment he felt a sheer love
for the woman. He kissed her belly and her mound of Venus,
to kiss close to the womb and the foetus within the womb.
’Oh, you love me! You love me!’ she said, in a little cry
like one of her blind, inarticulate love cries. And he went
in to her softly, feeling the stream of tenderness flowing in
release from his bowels to hers, the bowels of compassion
kindled between them.
And he realized as he went into her that this was the
thing he had to do, to e into tender touch, without losing
his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man. After all,
if she had money and means, and he had none, he should
be too proud and honourable to hold back his tenderness
from her on that account. ‘I stand for the touch of bodily
awareness between human beings,’ he said to himself, ‘and
the touch of tenderness. And she is my mate. And it is a
battle against the money, and the machine, and the insen-
tient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And she will stand
behind me there. Thank God I’ve got a woman! Thank God
I’ve got a woman who is with me, and tender and aware of
me. Thank God she’s not a bully, nor a fool. Thank God she’s
a tender, aware woman.’ And as his seed sprang in her, his

1 Lady Chatterly’s Lover