第82章

'Now in your heart.Then I want to come and live with you,always,soon.'

He sat naked on the bed,with his head dropped,unable to think.

'Don't you want it?'she asked.

'Ay!'he said.

Then with the same eyes darkened with another flame of consciousness,almost like sleep,he looked at her.

'Dunna ax me nowt now,'he said.'Let me be.I like thee.I luv thee when tha lies theer.A woman's a lovely thing when 'er's deep ter fuck,and cunt's good.Ah luv thee,thy legs,an'th'shape on thee,an'th'

womanness on thee.Ah luv th'womanness on thee.Ah luv thee wi'my bas an'wi'my heart.But dunna ax me nowt.Dunna ma'e me say nowt.Let me stop as I am while I can.Tha can ax me iverything after.Now let me be,let me be!'

And softly,he laid his hand over her mound of Venus,on the soft brown maiden-hair,and himself-sat still and naked on the bed,his face motionless in physical abstraction,almost like the face of Buddha.Motionless,and in the invisible flame of another consciousness,he sat with his hand on her,and waited for the turn.

After a while,he reached for his shirt and put it on,dressed himself swiftly in silence,looked at her once as she still lay naked and faintly golden like a Gloire de Dijon rose on the bed,and was gone.She heard him downstairs opening the door.

And still she lay musing,musing.It was very hard to go:to go out of his arms.He called from the foot of the stairs:'Half past seven!'

She sighed,and got out of bed.The bare little room!Nothing in it at all but the small chest of drawers and the smallish bed.But the board floor was scrubbed clean.And in the corner by the window gable was a shelf with some books,and some from a circulating library.She looked.There were books about Bolshevist Russia,books of travel,a volume about the atom and the electron,another about the composition of the earth's core,and the causes of earthquakes:then a few novels:then three books on India.

So!He was a reader after all.

The sun fell on her naked limbs through the gable window.Outside she saw the dog Flossie roaming round.The hazel-brake was misted with green,and dark-green dogs-mercury under.It was a clear clean morning with birds flying and triumphantly singing.If only she could stay!If only there weren't the other ghastly world of smoke and iron!If only he would make her a world.

She came downstairs,down the steep,narrow wooden stairs.Still she would be content with this little house,if only it were in a world of its own.

He was washed and fresh,and the fire was burning.'Will you eat anything?'

he said.

'No!Only lend me a comb.'

She followed him into the scullery,and combed her hair before the handbreadth of mirror by the back door.Then she was ready to go.

She stood in the little front garden,looking at the dewy flowers,the grey bed of pinks in bud already.

'I would like to have all the rest of the world disappear,'she said,'and live with you here.'

'It won't disappear,'he said.

They went almost in silence through the lovely dewy wood.But they were together in a world of their own.

It was bitter to her to go on to Wragby.

'I want soon to come and live with you altogether,'she said as she left him.

He smiled,unanswering.

She got home quietly and unremarked,and went up to her room.