somehow struggling helplessly.
He roused in the woman a wild sort of compassion and yearning, and a
wild, craving physical desire. The physical desire he did not satisfy in
her; he was always come and finished so quickly, then shrinking down on her
breast, and recovering somewhat his effrontery while she lay dazed,
disappointed, lost.
But then she soon learnt to hold him, to keep him there inside her when
his crisis was over. And there he was generous and curiously potent; he
stayed firm inside her, giving to her, while she was active...wildly,
passionately active, coming to her own crisis. And as he felt the frenzy of
her achieving her own orgasmic satisfaction from his hard, erect passivity,
he had a curious sense of pride and satisfaction.
`Ah, how good!' she whispered tremulously, and she became quite still,
clinging to him. And he lay there in his own isolation, but somehow proud.
He stayed that time only the three days, and to Clifford was exactly
the same as on the first evening; to Connie also. There was no breaking down
his external man.
He wrote to Connie with the same plaintive melancholy note as ever,
sometimes witty, and touched with a queer, sexless affection. A kind of
hopeless affection he seemed to feel for her, and the essential remoteness
remained the same. He was hopeless at the very core of him, and he wanted to
be hopeless. He rather hated hope. `Une immense espèrance a traversè la
terre', he read somewhere, and his comment was:`---and it's darned-well
drowned everything worth having.'
Connie never really understood him, but, in her way, she loved him. And
all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She
couldn't quite, quite love in hopelessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't
ever quite love at all.
So they went on for quite a time, writing, and meeting occasionally in
London. She still wanted the physical, sexual thrill she could get with him
by her own activity, his little orgasm being over. And he still wanted to
give it her. Which was enough to keep them connected.
And enough to give her a subtle sort of self-assurance, something blind
and a little arrogant. It was an almost mechanical confidence in her own
powers, and went with a great cheerfulness.
She was terrifically cheerful at Wragby. And she used all her aroused
cheerfulness and satisfaction to stimulate Clifford, so that he wrote his
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