Page 469 - sons-and-lovers

of the next quarter of an hour was refined beyond expres-
sion. It was the anguish of combining the living self with
the shell. Then he saw her. She came! And he was there.
‘You are late,’ he said.
‘Only five minutes,’ she answered.
‘I’d never have done it to you,’ he laughed.
She was in a dark blue costume. He looked at her beauti-
ful figure.
‘You want some flowers,’ he said, going to the nearest flo-
rist’s.
She followed him in silence. He bought her a bunch
of scarlet, brick-red carnations. She put them in her coat,
flushing.
‘That’s a fine colour!’ he said.
‘I’d rather have had something softer,’ she said.
He laughed.
‘Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the
street?’ he said.
She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. He
looked sideways at her as they walked. There was a won-
derful close down on her face near the ear that he wanted
to touch. And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very
full ear of corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was
about her, made his brain spin. He seemed to be spinning
down the street, everything going round.
As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder
against him, and he took her hand. He felt himself coming
round from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe. Her ear,
half-hidden among her blonde hair, was near to him. The

Sons and Lovers