Women in Love

Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his motion, went

out of the house and straight across the park, to the open country, to

the hills. The brilliant day had become overcast, spots of rain were

falling. He wandered on to a wild valley-side, where were thickets of

hazel, many flowers, tufts of heather, and little clumps of young

firtrees, budding with soft paws. It was rather wet everywhere, there

was a stream running down at the bottom of the valley, which was

gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not regain his

consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of darkness.

Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was

overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them

all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his

clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly

among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the

arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his breasts. It

was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, he seemed to saturate

himself with their contact.

But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of

young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs

beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little

cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their

clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him

vividly, but not too much, because all his movements were too

discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, cool young

hyacinths, to lie on one's belly and cover one's back with handfuls of

fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more

beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh

against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel

the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to

clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its

hardness, its vital knots and ridges--this was good, this was all very

good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would

satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling

into one's blood. How fortunate he was, that there was this lovely,

subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as he waited for it;

how fulfilled he was, how happy!

As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he thought about

Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain on the side of his head.

But after all, what did it matter? What did Hermione matter, what did

people matter altogether? There was this perfect cool loneliness, so

lovely and fresh and unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made,

thinking he wanted people, thinking he wanted a woman. He did not want

a woman--not in the least. The leaves and the primroses and the trees,

they were really lovely and cool and desirable, they really came into

the blood and were added on to him. He was enrichened now immeasurably,

and so glad.