Page 549 - sons-and-lovers

She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from her
drying with a laugh.
‘What are you looking at?’ she said.
‘You,’ he answered, laughing.
Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing her
white ‘goose-fleshed’ shoulder, and thinking:
‘What is she? What is she?’
She loved him in the morning. There was something de-
tached, hard, and elemental about his kisses then, as if he
were only conscious of his own will, not in the least of her
and her wanting him.
Later in the day he went out sketching.
‘You,’ he said to her, ‘go with your mother to Sutton. I
am so dull.’
She stood and looked at him. He knew she wanted to
come with him, but he preferred to be alone. She made him
feel imprisoned when she was there, as if he could not get a
free deep breath, as if there were something on top of him.
She felt his desire to be free of her.
In the evening he came back to her. They walked down
the shore in the darkness, then sat for a while in the shelter
of the sandhills.
‘It seems,’ she said, as they stared over the darkness of
the sea, where no light was to be seen—‘it seemed as if you
only loved me at night—as if you didn’t love me in the day-
time.’
He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty
under the accusation.
‘The night is free to you,’ he replied. ‘In the daytime I

Sons and Lovers