Clifford! Like Michaelis even! Both sensually a bit doggy and humiliating.
The supreme pleasure of the mind! And what is that to a woman? What is it,
really, to the man either! He becomes merely messy and doggy, even in his
mind. It needs sheer sensuality even to purify and quicken the mind. Sheer
fiery sensuality, not messiness.
Ah, God, how rare a thing a man is! They are all dogs that trot and
sniff and copulate. To have found a man who was not afraid and not ashamed!
She looked at him now, sleeping so like a wild animal asleep, gone, gone in
the remoteness of it. She nestled down, not to be away from him.
Till his rousing waked her completely. He was sitting up in bed,
looking down at her. She saw her own nakedness in his eyes, immediate
knowledge of her. And the fluid, male knowledge of herself seemed to flow to
her from his eyes and wrap her voluptuously. Oh, how voluptuous and lovely
it was to have limbs and body half-asleep, heavy and suffused with passion.
`Is it time to wake up?' she said.
`Half past six.'
She had to be at the lane-end at eight. Always, always, always this
compulsion on one!
`I might make the breakfast and bring it up here; should I?' he said.
`Oh yes!'
Flossie whimpered gently below. He got up and threw off his pyjamas,
and rubbed himself with a towel. When the human being is full of courage and
full of life, how beautiful it is! So she thought, as she watched him in
silence.
`Draw the curtain, will you?'
The sun was shining already on the tender green leaves of morning, and
the wood stood bluey-fresh, in the nearness. She sat up in bed, looking
dreamily out through the dormer window, her naked arms pushing her naked
breasts together. He was dressing himself. She was half-dreaming of life, a
life together with him: just a life.
He was going, fleeing from her dangerous, crouching nakedness.
`Have I lost my nightie altogether?' she said.
He pushed his hand down in the bed, and pulled out the bit of flimsy
silk.
`I knowed I felt silk at my ankles,' he said.
But the night-dress was slit almost in two.
`Never mind!' she said. `It belongs here, really. I'll leave it.'
`Ay, leave it, I can put it between my legs at night, for company.
There's no name nor mark on it, is there?'
She slipped on the torn thing, and sat dreamily looking out of the
window. The window was Open, the air of morning drifted in, and the sound of
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