helped him in the morning, and soon valeted him completely, even shaving
him, in her soft, tentative woman's way. She was very good and competent,
and she soon knew how to have him in her power. He wasn't so very different
from the colliers after all, when you lathered his chin, and softly rubbed
the bristles. The stand-offishness and the lack of frankness didn't bother
her; she was having a new experience.
Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for
giving up her personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed, he
said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and her. But
Connie didn't mind that. The fine flower of their intimacy was to her rather
like an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on her tree of life, and producing,
to her eyes, a rather shabby flower.
Now she had more time to herself she could softly play the piano, up in
her room, and sing: `Touch not the nettle, for the bonds of love are ill to
loose.' She had not realized till lately how ill to loose they were, these
bonds of love. But thank Heaven she had loosened them! She was so glad to be
alone, not always to have to talk to him. When he was alone he
tapped-tapped-tapped on a typewriter, to infinity. But when he was not
`working', and she was there, he talked, always talked; infinite small
analysis of people and motives, and results, characters and personalities,
till now she had had enough. For years she had loved it, until she had
enough, and then suddenly it was too much. She was thankful to be alone.
It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of
consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till
they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she
was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the
threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear. But
the bonds of such love are more ill to loose even than most bonds; though
Mrs Bolton's coming had been a great help.
But he still wanted the old intimate evenings of talk with Connie: talk
or reading aloud. But now she could arrange that Mrs Bolton should come at
ten to disturb them. At ten o'clock Connie could go upstairs and be alone.
Clifford was in good hands with Mrs Bolton.
Mrs Bolton ate with Mrs Betts in the housekeeper's room, since they
were all agreeable. And it was curious how much closer the servants'
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