Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/372

360 her breasts that swayed and made him frightened as she rubbed them, and he thought again:

“But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morning and the sea. Is she—? is she—?”

She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from her drying with a laugh.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“You,” he answered, laughing.

Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing her white “goose-fleshed” shoulder, and thinking:

“What is she? What is she?”

She loved him in the morning. There was something detached, hard, and elemental about his kisses then, as if he were only conscious of his own will, not in the least of her and her wanting him.

Later in the day he went out sketching.

“You,” he said to her, “go with your mother to Sutton. I am so dull.”

She stood and looked at him. He knew she wanted to come with him, but he preferred to be alone. She made him feel imprisoned when she was there, as if he could not get a free deep breath, as if there were something on top of him. She felt his desire to be free of her.

In the evening he came back to her. They walked down the shore in the darkness, then sat for awhile in the shelter of the sandhills.

“It seems,” she said, as they stared over the darkness of the sea, where no light was to be seen—“it seemed as if you only loved me at night—as if you didn’t love me in the daytime.”

He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty under the accusation.

“The night is free to you,” he replied. “In the daytime I want to be by myself.”

“But why?” she said. “Why, even now, when we are on this short holiday?”

“I don’t know. Love-making stifles me in the daytime.”

“But it needn’t be always love-making,” she said.

“It always is,” he answered, “when you and I are together.”

She sat feeling very bitter.

“Do you ever want to marry me?” he asked curiously.

“Do you me?” she replied.

“Yes, yes; I should like us to have children,” he answered slowly.