She slipped out of the side door, and took her way direct and a little sullen. When she came to the clearing she was terribly uneasy. But there he was again, in his shirt–sleeves, stooping, letting the hens out of the coops, among the chicks that were now growing a little gawky, but were much more trim than hen–chickens.

She went straight across to him. ‘You see I’ve come!’ she said.

‘Ay, I see it!’ he said, straightening his back, and looking at her with a faint amusement.

‘Do you let the hens out now?’ she asked.

‘Yes, they’ve sat themselves to skin and bone,’ he said. ‘An’ now they’re not all that anxious to come out an’ feed. There’s no self in a sitting hen; she’s all in the eggs or the chicks.’

The poor mother–hens; such blind devotion! even to eggs not their own! Connie looked at them in compassion. A helpless silence fell between the man and the woman.

‘Shall us go i’ th’ ‘ut?’ he asked.

‘Do you want me?’ she asked, in a sort of mistrust.

‘Ay, if you want to come.’

She was silent.

‘Come then!’ he said.

And she went with him to the hut. It was quite dark when he had shut the door, so he made a small light in the lantern, as before.

‘Have you left your underthings off?’ he asked her.

‘Yes!’

‘Ay, well, then I’ll take my things off too.’

He spread the blankets, putting one at the side for a coverlet. She took off her hat, and shook her hair. He sat down, taking off his shoes and gaiters, and undoing his cord breeches.

‘Lie down then!’ he said, when he stood in his shirt. She obeyed in silence, and he lay beside her, and pulled the blanket over them both.

‘There!’ he said.

And he lifted her dress right back, till he came even to her breasts. He kissed them softly, taking the nipples in his lips in tiny caresses.

‘Eh, but tha’rt nice, tha’rt nice!’ he said, suddenly rubbing his face with a snuggling movement against her warm belly.

And she put her arms round him under his shirt, but she was afraid, afraid of his thin, smooth, naked body, that seemed so powerful, afraid of the violent muscles. She shrank, afraid.

And when he said, with a sort of little sigh: ‘Eh, tha’rt nice!’ something in her quivered, and something in her spirit stiffened in resistance: stiffened from the terribly physical intimacy, and from the peculiar haste of his possession. And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with her ends inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor, insignificant, moist little penis. This was the divine love! After all, the moderns were right when they felt contempt for the performance; for it was a performance. It was quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humour, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance. Even a Maupassant found it a humiliating anti–climax. Men despised the intercourse act, and yet did it.