Page 555 - sons-and-lovers

‘It’s what men WON’T let you do. They won’t let you get
really near to them,’ she said.
‘And haven’t I let you?’
‘Yes,’ she answered slowly; ‘but you’ve never come near to
me. You can’t come out of yourself, you can’t. Baxter could
do that better than you.’
He walked on pondering. He was angry with her for
prefering Baxter to him.
‘You begin to value Baxter now you’ve not got him,’ he
said.
‘No; I can only see where he was different from you.’
But he felt she had a grudge against him.
One evening, as they were coming home over the fields,
she startled him by asking:
‘Do you think it’s worth it—the—the sex part?’
‘The act of loving, itself?’
‘Yes; is it worth anything to you?’
‘But how can you separate it?’ he said. ‘It’s the culmina-
tion of everything. All our intimacy culminates then.’
‘Not for me,’ she said.
He was silent. A flash of hate for her came up. After all,
she was dissatisfied with him, even there, where he thought
they fulfilled each other. But he believed her too implicitly.
‘I feel,’ she continued slowly, ‘as if I hadn’t got you, as if
all of you weren’t there, and as if it weren’t ME you were
taking—-‘
‘Who, then?’
‘Something just for yourself. It has been fine, so that I
daren’t think of it. But is it ME you want, or is it IT?’

Sons and Lovers