Women in Love

'What do you mean?' she replied. 'My God, what a mercy I am NOT married

to you!' Her voice of flouting and contempt scotched him. He was brought up

short. But he recovered himself.

'Tell me, only tell me,' he reiterated in a dangerous narrowed

voice--'tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.' 'I am not fascinated,' she said, with cold repelling innocence.

'Yes, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, like a bird

gaping ready to fall down its throat.' She looked at him with black fury.

'I don't choose to be discussed by you,' she said.

'It doesn't matter whether you choose or not,' he replied, 'that

doesn't alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and kiss the

feet of that little insect. And I don't want to prevent you--do it,

fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is that

fascinates you--what is it?' She was silent, suffused with black rage.

'How DARE you come brow-beating me,' she cried, 'how dare you, you

little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you think?' His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that

she was in his power--the wolf. And because she was in his power, she

hated him with a power that she wondered did not kill him. In her will

she killed him as he stood, effaced him.

'It is not a question of right,' said Gerald, sitting down on a chair.

She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical

body moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with

fatal contempt.

'It's not a question of my right over you--though I HAVE some right,

remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that

subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is

that brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to

know what you creep after.' She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round.

'Do you?' she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. 'Do you want

to know what it is in him? It's because he has some understanding of a

woman, because he is not stupid. That's why it is.' A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald's face.

'But what understanding is it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea,

a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the

understanding of a flea?' There passed through Gudrun's mind Blake's representation of the soul

of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake was a clown too. But

it was necessary to answer Gerald.