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a corner of my drawing-room. There’s a place for all these
things.’
’You mean you wouldn’t mind if he made love to Julia in
some discreet alcove?’
Charlie May was slightly satirical, for he had flirted a very
little with Julia, and Hammond had cut up very roughly.
’Of course I should mind. Sex is a private thing between
me and Julia; and of course I should mind anyone else try-
ing to mix in.’
’As a matter of fact,’ said the lean and freckled Tommy
Dukes, who looked much more Irish than May, who was
pale and rather fat: ‘As a matter of fact, Hammond, you
have a strong property instinct, and a strong will to self-as-
sertion, and you want success. Since I’ve been in the army
definitely, I’ve got out of the way of the world, and now I
see how inordinately strong the craving for self-assertion
and success is in men. It is enormously overdeveloped. All
our individuality has run that way. And of course men like
you think you’ll get through better with a woman’s back-
ing. That’s why you’re so jealous. That’s what sex is to you...
a vital little dynamo between you and Julia, to bring suc-
cess. If you began to be unsuccessful you’d begin to flirt,
like Charlie, who isn’t successful. Married people like you
and Julia have labels on you, like travellers’ trunks. Julia is
labelled MRS ARNOLD B. HAMMOND—just like a trunk
on the railway that belongs to somebody. And you are la-
belled ARNOLD B. HAMMOND, C/O MRS ARNOLD
B. HAMMOND. Oh, you’re quite right, you’re quite right!
The life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent

Lady Chatterly’s Lover