flattening and going a little harsh. It was as if it had not had enough sun
and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless.
Disappointed of its real womanhood, it had not succeeded in becoming
boyish, and unsubstantial, and transparent; instead it had gone opaque.
Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were
unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there. And her belly had
lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was young, in the days of
her German boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was young and
expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going slack, and a little
flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, they used to look
so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness, somehow they too were going
flat, slack, meaningless.
Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much
insignificant substance. It made her feel immensely depressed and hopeless.
What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and
sparkle in the flesh. Old through neglect and denial, yes, denial.
Fashionable women kept their bodies bright like delicate porcelain, by
external attention. There was nothing inside the porcelain; but she was not
even as bright as that. The mental life! Suddenly she hated it with a
rushing fury, the swindle!
She looked in the other mirror's reflection at her back, her waist, her
loins. She was getting thinner, but to her it was not becoming. The crumple
of her waist at the back, as she bent back to look, was a little weary; and
it used to be so gay-looking. And the longish slope of her haunches and her
buttocks had lost its gleam and its sense of richness. Gone! Only the German
boy had loved it, and he was ten years dead, very nearly. How time went by!
Ten years dead, and she was only twenty-seven. The healthy boy with his
fresh, clumsy sensuality that she had then been so scornful of! Where would
she find it now? It was gone out of men. They had their pathetic,
two-seconds spasms like Michaelis; but no healthy human sensuality, that
warms the blood and freshens the whole being.
Still she thought the most beautiful part of her was the long-sloping
fall of the haunches from the socket of the back, and the slumberous, round
stillness of the buttocks. Like hillocks of sand, the Arabs say, soft and
downward-slipping with a long slope. Here the life still lingered hoping.
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>