Page 81 - lady-chatterlys-lover

things don’t happen at the same time in me.’
’I think they ought to.’
’All right. The fact that things ought to be something else
than what they are, is not my department.
Connie considered this. ‘It isn’t true,’ she said. ‘Men can
love women and talk to them. I don’t see how they can love
them WITHOUT talking, and being friendly and intimate.
How can they?’
’Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. What’s the use of my gen-
eralizing? I only know my own case. I like women, but I
don’t desire them. I like talking to them; but talking to
them, though it makes me intimate in one direction, sets
me poles apart from them as far as kissing is concerned. So
there you are! But don’t take me as a general example, prob-
ably I’m just a special case: one of the men who like women,
but don’t love women, and even hate them if they force me
into a pretence of love, or an entangled appearance.
’But doesn’t it make you sad?’
’Why should it? Not a bit! I look at Charlie May, and the
rest of the men who have affairs...No, I don’t envy them a
bit! If fate sent me a woman I wanted, well and good. Since
I don’t know any woman I want, and never see one...why,
I presume I’m cold, and really LIKE some women very
much.’
’Do you like me?’
’Very much! And you see there’s no question of kissing
between us, is there?’
’None at all!’ said Connie. ‘But oughtn’t there to be?’
’ WHY, in God’s name? I like Clifford, but what would

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