Cold and derisive her queer female mind stood apart, and though she lay perfectly still, her impulse was to heave her loins, and throw the man out, escape his ugly grip, and the butting over–riding of his absurd haunches. His body was a foolish, impudent, imperfect thing, a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness. For surely a complete evolution would eliminate this performance, this ‘function’.

And yet when he had finished, soon over, and lay very very still, receding into silence, and a strange motionless distance, far, farther than the horizon of her awareness, her heart began to weep. She could feel him ebbing away, ebbing away, leaving her there like a stone on a shore. He was withdrawing, his spirit was leaving her. He knew.

And in real grief, tormented by her own double consciousness and reaction, she began to weep. He took no notice, or did not even know. The storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him.

‘Ay!’ he said. ‘It was no good that time. You wasn’t there.’—So he knew! Her sobs became violent.

‘But what’s amiss?’ he said. ‘It’s once in a while that way.’

‘I...I can’t love you,’ she sobbed, suddenly feeling her heart breaking.

‘Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There’s no law says as tha’s got to. Ta’e it for what it is.’

He still lay with his hand on her breast. But she had drawn both her hands from him.

His words were small comfort. She sobbed aloud.

‘Nay, nay!’ he said. ‘Ta’e the thick wi’ th’ thin. This wor a bit o’ thin for once.’

She wept bitterly, sobbing. ‘But I want to love you, and I can’t. It only seems horrid.’

He laughed a little, half bitter, half amused.

‘It isna horrid,’ he said, ‘even if tha thinks it is. An’ tha canna ma’e it horrid. Dunna fret thysen about lovin’ me. Tha’lt niver force thysen to ‘t. There’s sure to be a bad nut in a basketful. Tha mun ta’e th’ rough wi’ th’ smooth.’

He took his hand away from her breast, not touching her. And now she was untouched she took an almost perverse satisfaction in it. She hated the dialect: the THEE and the THA and the THYSEN. He could get up if he liked, and stand there, above her, buttoning down those absurd corduroy breeches, straight in front of her. After all, Michaelis had had the decency to turn away. This man was so assured in himself he didn’t know what a clown other people found him, a half–bred fellow.

Yet, as he was drawing away, to rise silently and leave her, she clung to him in terror.

‘Don’t! Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Don’t be cross with me! Hold me! Hold me fast!’ she whispered in blind frenzy, not even knowing what she said, and clinging to him with uncanny force. It was from herself she wanted to be saved, from her own inward anger and resistance. Yet how powerful was that inward resistance that possessed her!