Page:Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence.djvu/215

 "Me!" His eyes widened. "Ah no, I can't think of her," he said quietly.

"Why?"

But he shook his head.

"Then why don't you get a divorce? She'll come back to you one day," said Connie.

He looked up at her sharply.

"She wouldn't come within a mile of me. She hates me a lot worse than I hate her."

"You'll see she'll come back to you."

"That she never shall. That's done! It would make me sick to see her,"

"You will see her. And you're not even legally separated, are you?"

"No."

"Ah well, then she'll come back, and you'll have to take her in."

He gazed at Connie fixedly. Then he gave the queer toss of his head.

"You may be right. I was a fool ever to come back here. But I felt stranded, and had to go somewhere. A man's a poor bit of a wastrel, blown about. But you're right. I'll get a divorce and get clear. I hate those things like death, officials and courts and judges. But I've got to get through with it. I'll get a divorce."

And she saw his jaw set. Inwardly she exulted.

"I think I will have a cup of tea now," she said.

He rose to make it. But his face was set.

As they sat at table she asked him:

"Why did you marry her? She was commoner than yourself. Mrs. Bolton told me about her. She could never understand why you married her."

He looked at her fixedly.

"I'll tell you," he said. "The first girl I had, I began with when I was sixteen. She was a schoolmaster's daughter over at Ollerton, pretty, beautiful really. I was supposed to be a clever sort of young fellow from Sheffield Grammar School, with a bit of French and German, very much up aloft. She was the romantic sort that hated commonness. She egged me on to poetry and reading: in a way, she made a man of me. I read and I thought like a house on fire,