The only thing was to release his self–pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. ‘I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn’t!’ she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.

‘Now, don’t you fret, Sir Clifford!’ she said, in a luxury of emotion. ‘Now, don’t you fret, don’t, you’ll only do yourself an injury!’

His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. ‘There, there! There, there! Don’t you fret, then, don’t you! Don’t you fret!’ she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky–blond hair and said: ‘There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!’

And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale–blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.

So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: ‘Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you’ve come down to!’ And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! Such a come–down! So shameful! And it WAS so upsetting as well.

After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would hold her h, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said! ‘Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!’ And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! ‘Do kiss me!’ and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna–worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of perversity, of being a child when he was a man.