Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken with an apparent candour and an apparent wonderment, that looked almost like a religious exaltation: the perverse and literal rendering of: ‘except ye become again as a little child’.—While she was the Magna Mater, full of power and potency, having the great blond child–man under her will and her stroke entirely.

The curious thing was that when this child–man, which Clifford was now and which he had been becoming for years, emerged into the world, it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This perverted child–man was now a REAL business–man; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he–man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and ‘making good’ his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business–clever. In business he was quite inhuman.

And in this Mrs Bolton triumphed. ‘How he’s getting on!’ she would say to herself in pride. ‘And that’s my doing! My word, he’d never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself.’

At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she despised him and hated him! He was to her the fallen beast, the squirming monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in the remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him with a savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better than he.

His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to Wragby. On this point he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back to Wragby, faithfully.

‘But is it any use?’ said Mrs Bolton. ‘Can’t you let her go, and be rid of her?’

‘No! She said she was coming back, and she’s got to come.’

Mrs Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.

I needn’t tell you what effect your letter has had on me [he wrote to Connie to London]. Perhaps you can imagine it if you try, though no doubt you won’t trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.

I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at Wragby, before I can do anything. You promised faithfully to come back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don’t believe anything nor understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal circumstances. I needn’t tell you that nobody here suspects anything, so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have talked things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to terms.