Women in Love

It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What had he to do

with her? Why should he pretend to have anything to do with human

beings at all? Here was his world, he wanted nobody and nothing but the

lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, and himself, his own living

self.

It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. But that did

not matter, so one knew where one belonged. He knew now where he

belonged. This was his place, his marriage place. The world was

extraneous.

He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. But if so, he

preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his

own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world,

which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of

his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.

As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, that

was only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human being adhere to

humanity. But he was weary of the old ethic, of the human being, and of

humanity. He loved now the soft, delicate vegetation, that was so cool

and perfect. He would overlook the old grief, he would put away the old

ethic, he would be free in his new state.

He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and more difficult

every minute. He was walking now along the road to the nearest station.

It was raining and he had no hat. But then plenty of cranks went out

nowadays without hats, in the rain.

He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a certain

depression, was due to fear, fear lest anybody should have seen him

naked lying against the vegetation. What a dread he had of mankind, of

other people! It amounted almost to horror, to a sort of dream

terror--his horror of being observed by some other people. If he were

on an island, like Alexander Selkirk, with only the creatures and the

trees, he would be free and glad, there would be none of this

heaviness, this misgiving. He could love the vegetation and be quite

happy and unquestioned, by himself.

He had better send a note to Hermione: she might trouble about him, and

he did not want the onus of this. So at the station, he wrote saying: I will go on to town--I don't want to come back to Breadalby for the

present. But it is quite all right--I don't want you to mind having

biffed me, in the least. Tell the others it is just one of my moods.

You were quite right, to biff me--because I know you wanted to. So

there's the end of it.