Page 637 - sons-and-lovers

and attended to her with respect.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘See,’ she said, ‘how you waste yourself! You might be ill,
you might die, and I never know—be no more then than if I
had never known you.’
‘And if we married?’ he asked.
‘At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and be-
ing a prey to other women—like—like Clara.’
‘A prey?’ he repeated, smiling.
She bowed her head in silence. He lay feeling his despair
come up again.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said slowly, ‘that marriage would be
much good.’
‘I only think of you,’ she replied.
‘I know you do. But—you love me so much, you want to
put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered.’
She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips, while
the bitterness surged up in her heart.
‘And what will you do otherwise?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know—go on, I suppose. Perhaps I shall soon go
abroad.’
The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go
on her knees on the rug before the fire, very near to him.
There she crouched as if she were crushed by something,
and could not raise her head. His hands lay quite inert on
the arms of his chair. She was aware of them. She felt that
now he lay at her mercy. If she could rise, take him, put her
arms round him, and say, ‘You are mine,’ then he would
leave himself to her. But dare she? She could easily sacri-

Sons and Lovers