Page 365 - sons-and-lovers

lovingly, lingering over them. He always seemed to her too
quick and almost scientific. Yet his bunches had a natural
beauty more than hers. He loved them, but as if they were
his and he had a right to them. She had more reverence for
them: they held something she had not.
The flowers were very fresh and sweet. He wanted to
drink them. As he gathered them, he ate the little yellow
trumpets. Clara was still wandering about disconsolately.
Going towards her, he said:
‘Why don’t you get some?’
‘I don’t believe in it. They look better growing.’
‘But you’d like some?’
‘They want to be left.’
‘I don’t believe they do.’
‘I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me,’ she said.
‘That’s a stiff, artificial notion,’ he said. ‘They don’t die
any quicker in water than on their roots. And besides, they
LOOK nice in a bowl—they look jolly. And you only call a
thing a corpse because it looks corpse-like.’
‘Whether it is one or not?’ she argued.
‘It isn’t one to me. A dead flower isn’t a corpse of a flow-
er.’
Clara now ignored him.
‘And even so—what right have you to pull them?’ she
asked.
‘Because I like them, and want them—and there’s plenty
of them.’
‘And that is sufficient?’
‘Yes. Why not? I’m sure they’d smell nice in your room

Sons and Lovers