Page 78 - lady-chatterlys-lover

’But you want me to go on, to get my own satisfaction?’
she said.
He laughed grimly: ‘I want it!’ he said. ‘That’s good! I
want to hang on with my teeth clenched, while you go for
me!’
’But don’t you?’ she insisted.
He avoided the question. ‘All the darned women are like
that,’ he said. ‘Either they don’t go off at all, as if they were
dead in there...or else they wait till a chap’s really done, and
then they start in to bring themselves off, and a chap’s got
to hang on. I never had a woman yet who went off just at the
same moment as I did.’
Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine in-
formation. She was only stunned by his feeling against her...
his incomprehensible brutality. She felt so innocent.
’But you want me to have my satisfaction too, don’t you?’
she repeated.
’Oh, all right! I’m quite willing. But I’m darned if hang-
ing on waiting for a woman to go off is much of a game for
a man...’
This speech was one of the crucial blows of Connie’s life.
It killed something in her. She had not been so very keen on
Michaelis; till he started it, she did not want him. It was as
if she never positively wanted him. But once he had started
her, it seemed only natural for her to come to her own cri-
sis with him. Almost she had loved him for it...almost that
night she loved him, and wanted to marry him.
Perhaps instinctively he knew it, and that was why he
had to bring down the whole show with a smash; the house