Любовник леди Чаттерлей / Lady Chatterley's Lover

So next morning Mick was more uneasy than ever; restless, devoured, with his hands restless in his trousers pockets. Connie had not visited him in the night… and he had not known where to find her. Coquetry!.. at his moment of triumph.

He went up to her sitting-room in the morning. She knew he would come. And his restlessness was evident. He asked her about his play… did she think it good? He had to hear it praised: that affected him with the last thin thrill of passion beyond any sexual orgasm.

And she praised it rapturously. Yet all the while, at the bottom of her soul, she knew it was nothing.

“Look here!” he said suddenly at last. “Why don’t you and I make a clean thing of it? Why don’t we marry?”

“But I am married,” she said, amazed, and yet feeling nothing.

“Oh that!.. he’ll divorce you all right… Why don’t you and I marry? I want to marry. I know it would be the best thing for me… marry and lead a regular life. I lead the deuce of a life, simply tearing myself to pieces.

Look here, you and I, we’re made for one another… hand and glove. Why don’t we marry? Do you see any reason why we shouldn’t?”

Connie looked at him amazed: and yet she felt nothing. These men, they were all alike, they left everything out. They just went off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried heavenwards along with their own thin sticks.

“But I am married already,” she said.

“I can’t leave Clifford, you know.”

“Why not? but why not?” he cried. “He’ll hardly know you’ve gone, after six months. He doesn’t know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he’s entirely wrapped up in himself.”

Connie felt there was truth in this. But she also felt that Mick was hardly making a display of selflessness.

“Aren’t all men wrapped up in themselves?” she asked.

“Oh, more or less, I allow. A man’s got to be, to get through. But that’s not the point. The point is, what sort of a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can’t he? If he can’t he’s no right to the woman…” He paused and gazed at her with his full, hazel eyes, almost hypnotic. “Now I consider,” he added, “I can give a woman the darndest good time she can ask for. I think I can guarantee myself.