through it Clifford felt the inner effrontery. Connie didn't feel it,
perhaps because it was not directed against women; only against men, and
their presumptions and assumptions. That indestructible, inward effrontery
in the meagre fellow was what made men so down on Michaelis. His very
presence was an affront to a man of society, cloak it as he might in an
assumed good manner.
Connie was in love with him, but she managed to sit with her embroidery
and let the men talk, and not give herself away. As for Michaelis, he was
perfect; exactly the same melancholic, attentive, aloof young fellow of the
previous evening, millions of degrees remote from his hosts, but laconically
playing up to them to the required amount, and never coming forth to them
for a moment. Connie felt he must have forgotten the morning. He had not
forgotten. But he knew where he was...in the same old place outside, where
the born outsiders are. He didn't take the love-making altogether
personally. He knew it would not change him from an ownerless dog, whom
everybody begrudges its golden collar, into a comfortable society dog.
The final fact being that at the very bottom of his soul he was an
outsider, and anti-social, and he accepted the fact inwardly, no matter how
Bond-Streety he was on the outside. His isolation was a necessity to him;
just as the appearance of conformity and mixing-in with the smart people was
also a necessity.
But occasional love, as a comfort arid soothing, was also a good thing,
and he was not ungrateful. On the contrary, he was burningly, poignantly
grateful for a piece of natural, spontaneous kindness: almost to tears.
Beneath his pale, immobile, disillusioned face, his child's soul was sobbing
with gratitude to the woman, and burning to come to her again; just as his
outcast soul was knowing he would keep really clear of her.
He found an opportunity to say to her, as they were lighting the
candles in the hall:
`May I come?'
`I'll come to you,' she said.
`Oh, good!'
He waited for her a long time...but she came.
He was the trembling excited sort of lover, whose crisis soon came, and
was finished. There was something curiously childlike and defenceless about
his naked body: as children are naked. His defences were all in his wits and
cunning, his very instincts of cunning, and when these were in abeyance he
seemed doubly naked and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh, and
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