Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/57

Rh thought. And as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the rise of his knee.

“That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What makes me myself, among all these?”

Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.

“I am at my best, at my strongest,” he said proudly to himself. “She ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were a baboon under my clothing.”

He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.

“If I was giving her myself, I wouldn’t want that blemish on me,” he thought.

He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.

“She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I’d rather see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together could show…. Why doesn’t she like me?” he thought as he dressed. It was his physical self thinking.

After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in the dining-room arranging a 4