Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/309

Rh “I have said you were only fourteen—you are only four!”

He still dug at the earth viciously. He heard.

“You are a child of four,” she repeated in her anger.

He did not answer, but said in his heart: “All right; if I’m a child of four, what do you want me for? I don’t want another mother.” But he said nothing to her, and there was silence.

“And have you told your people?” she asked.

“I have told my mother.”

There was another long interval of silence.

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“Why, I want us to separate. We have lived on each other all these years; now let us stop. I will go my own way without you, and you will go your way without me. You will have an independent life of your own then.”

There was in it some truth that, in spite of her bitterness, she could not help registering. She knew she felt in a sort of bondage to him, which she hated because she could not control it. She had hated her love for him from the moment it grew too strong for her. And, deep down, she had hated him because she loved him and he dominated her. She had resisted his domination. She had fought to keep herself free of him in the last issue. And she was free of him, even more than he of her.

“And,” he continued, “we shall always be more or less each other’s work. You have done a lot for me, I for you. Now let us start and live by ourselves.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Nothing—only be free,” he answered.

She, however, knew in her heart that Clara’s influence was over him to liberate him. But she said nothing.

“And what have I to tell my mother?” she asked.

“I told my mother,” he answered, “that I was breaking off—clean and altogether.”

“I shall not tell them at home,” she said.

Frowning, “You please yourself,” he said.

He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving her in the lurch. It angered him.

“Tell them you wouldn’t and won’t marry me, and have broken off,” he said. “It’s true enough.”

She bit her finger moodily. She thought over their whole affair. She had known it would come to this; she had seen it all along. It chimed with her bitter expectation.