business...the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not bring
himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate
enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but
bodily they were non-existent to one another, and neither could bear to drag
in the corpus delicti. They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.
Connie guessed, however, that her father had said something, and that
something was in Clifford's mind. She knew that he didn't mind whether she
were demi-vierge or demi-monde, so long as he didn't absolutely know, and
wasn't made to see. What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know,
doesn't exist.
Connie and Clifford had now been nearly two years at Wragby, living
their vague life of absorption in Clifford and his work. Their interests had
never ceased to flow together over his work. They talked and wrestled in the
throes of composition, and felt as if something were happening, really
happening, really in the void.
And thus far it was a life: in the void. For the rest it was
non-existence. Wragby was there, the servants...but spectral, not really
existing. Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined
the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicking the brown leaves
of autumn, and picking the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream; or
rather it was like the simulacrum of reality. The oak-leaves were to her
like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody
had read about, picking primroses that were only shadows or memories, or
words. No substance to her or anything...no touch, no contact! Only this
life with Clifford, this endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae
of consciousness, these stories Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and
they wouldn't last. Why should there be anything in them, why should they
last? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the
moment is the appearance of reality.
Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he
invited them to Wragby. He invited all sorts of people, critics and writers,
people who would help to praise his books. And they were flattered at being
asked to Wragby, and they praised. Connie understood it all perfectly. But
why not? This was one of the fleeting patterns in the mirror. What was wrong
with it?
She was hostess to these people...mostly men. She was hostess also to
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