venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to consider, and
it was curious, there wasn't a man in the world whose children you wanted.
Mick's children! Repulsive thought! As lief have a child to a rabbit! Tommy
Dukes? he was very nice, but somehow you couldn't associate him with a baby,
another generation. He ended in himself. And out of all the rest of
Clifford's pretty wide acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse
her contempt, when she thought of having a child by him. There were several
who would have been quite possible as lover, even Mick. But to let them
breed a child on you! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination.
So that was that!
Nevertheless, Connie had the child at the back of her mind. Wait! wait!
She would sift the generations of men through her sieve, and see if she
couldn't find one who would do.---`Go ye into the streets and by ways of
Jerusalem, and see if you can find a man.' It had been impossible to find a
man in the Jerusalem of the prophet, though there were thousands of male
humans. But a man! C'est une autre chose!
She had an idea that he would have to be a foreigner: not an
Englishman, still less an Irishman. A real foreigner.
But wait! wait! Next winter she would get Clifford to London; the
following winter she would get him abroad to the South of France, Italy.
Wait! She was in no hurry about the child. That was her own private affair,
and the one point on which, in her own queer, female way, she was serious to
the bottom of her soul. She was not going to risk any chance comer, not she!
One might take a lover almost at any moment, but a man who should beget a
child on one...wait! wait! it's a very different matter.---`Go ye into the
streets and byways of Jerusalem...' It was not a question of love; it was a
question of a man. Why, one might even rather hate him, personally. Yet if
he was the man, what would one's personal hate matter? This business
concerned another part of oneself.
It had rained as usual, and the paths were too sodden for Clifford's
chair, but Connie would go out. She went out alone every day now, mostly in
the wood, where she was really alone. She saw nobody there.
This day, however, Clifford wanted to send a message to the keeper, and
as the boy was laid up with influenza, somebody always seemed to have
influenza at Wragby, Connie said she would call at the cottage.
The air was soft and dead, as if all the world were slowly dying. Grey
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