lifting his slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears,
quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water, and utterly alone. Connie
backed away round the corner of the house, and hurried away to the wood. In
spite of herself, she had had a shock. After all, merely a man washing
himself, commonplace enough, Heaven knows!
Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her
in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over
the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense
of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white,
solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And
beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty,
not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a
single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a body!
Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb, and she knew it;
it lay inside her. But with her mind she was inclined to ridicule. A man
washing himself in a back yard! No doubt with evil-smelling yellow soap! She
was rather annoyed; why should she be made to stumble on these vulgar
privacies?
So she walked away from herself, but after a while she sat down on a
stump. She was too confused to think. But in the coil of her confusion, she
was determined to deliver her message to the fellow. She would not he
balked. She must give him time to dress himself, but not time to go out. He
was probably preparing to go out somewhere.
So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came near, the cottage
looked just the same. A dog barked, and she knocked at the door, her heart
beating in spite of herself.
She heard the man coming lightly downstairs. He opened the door
quickly, and startled her. He looked uneasy himself, but instantly a laugh
came on his face.
`Lady Chatterley!' he said. `Will you come in?'
His manner was so perfectly easy and good, she stepped over the
threshold into the rather dreary little room.
`I only called with a message from Sir Clifford,' she said in her soft,
rather breathless voice.
The man was looking at her with those blue, all-seeing eyes of his,
which made her turn her face aside a little. He thought her comely, almost
beautiful, in her shyness, and he took command of the situation himself at
once.
`Would you care to sit down?' he asked, presuming she would not. The
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