said. `If we brought it up at Wragby, it would belong to us and to the
place. I don't believe very intensely in fatherhood. If we had the child to
rear, it would be our own, and it would carry on. Don't you think it's worth
considering?'
Connie looked up at him at last. The child, her child, was just an `it'
to him. It...it...it!
`But what about the other man?' she asked.
`Does it matter very much? Do these things really affect us very
deeply?...You had that lover in Germany...what is it now? Nothing almost. It
seems to me that it isn't these little acts and little connexions we make in
our lives that matter so very much. They pass away, and where are they?
Where...Where are the snows of yesteryear?...It's what endures through one's
life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long continuance and
development. But what do the occasional connexions matter? And the
occasional sexual connexions especially! If people don't exaggerate them
ridiculously, they pass like the mating of birds. And so they should. What
does it matter? It's the life-long companionship that matters. It's the
living together from day to day, not the sleeping together once or twice.
You and I are married, no matter what happens to us. We have the habit of
each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional
excitement. The long, slow, enduring thing...that's what we live by...not
the occasional spasm of any sort. Little by little, living together, two
people fall into a sort of unison, they vibrate so intricately to one
another. That's the real secret of marriage, not sex; at least not the
simple function of sex. You and I are interwoven in a marriage. If we stick
to that we ought to be able to arrange this sex thing, as we arrange going
to the dentist; since fate has given us a checkmate physically there.'
Connie sat and listened in a sort of wonder, and a sort of fear. She
did not know if he was right or not. There was Michaelis, whom she loved; so
she said to herself. But her love was somehow only an excursion from her
marriage with Clifford; the long, slow habit of intimacy, formed through
years of suffering and patience. Perhaps the human soul needs excursions,
and must not be denied them. But the point of an excursion is that you come
home again.
`And wouldn't you mind what man's child I had?' she asked.
`Why, Connie, I should trust your natural instinct of decency and
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