Page:Women in Love, Lawrence, 1920.djvu/48

40 "The eternal apple," he replied in exasperation, hating his own metaphors.

"Yes," she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:

"But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, anything, rather than this self- consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous."

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she resumed. "Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings — so thrown back — so turned back on themselves — incapable — " Hermione clenched her fist like one in a trance — "of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never carried away."

Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody — "never carried away, out of themselves, always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. — Isn't anything better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, than this, this nothingness."

"But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and self-conscious?" he asked irritably.

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.

"Yes," she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague weariness. It irritated him bitterly. "It is the mind," she said "and that is death." She raised her eyes slowly to him: "Isn't the mind," she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, "isn't it our death? Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up to-day, really dead before they have a chance to live?"

"Not because they have too much mind, but too little," he said brutally.