Page 82 - lady-chatterlys-lover

you say if I went and kissed him?’
’But isn’t there a difference?’
’Where does it lie, as far as we’re concerned? We’re all in-
telligent human beings, and the male and female business
is in abeyance. Just in abeyance. How would you like me to
start acting up like a continental male at this moment, and
parading the sex thing?’
’I should hate it.’
’Well then! I tell you, if I’m really a male thing at all, I
never run across the female of my species. And I don’t miss
her, I just like women. Who’s going to force me into loving
or pretending to love them, working up the sex game?’
’No, I’m not. But isn’t something wrong?’
’You may feel it, I don’t.’
’Yes, I feel something is wrong between men and women.
A woman has no glamour for a man any more.’
’Has a man for a woman?’
She pondered the other side of the question.
’Not much,’ she said truthfully.
’Then let’s leave it all alone, and just be decent and simple,
like proper human beings with one another. Be damned to
the artificial sex-compulsion! I refuse it!’
Connie knew he was right, really. Yet it left her feeling so
forlorn, so forlorn and stray. Like a chip on a dreary pond,
she felt. What was the point, of her or anything?
It was her youth which rebelled. These men seemed so
old and cold. Everything seemed old and cold. And Mi-
chaelis let one down so; he was no good. The men didn’t
want one; they just didn’t really want a woman, even Mi-

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