`People are always horrid,' he said.

`And did you mind very much?'

`I minded, as I always shall mind. And I knew I was a fool to mind.'

`Did you feel like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail? Clifford said you felt like that.'

He looked at her. It was cruel of her at that moment: for his pride had suffered bitterly.

`I suppose I did,' he said.

She never knew the fierce bitterness with which he resented insult.

There was a long pause.

`And did you miss me?' she asked.

`I was glad you were out of it.'

Again there was a pause.

`But did people believe about you and me?' she asked.

`No! I don't think so for a moment.'

`Did Clifford?'

`I should say not. He put it off without thinking about it. But naturally it made him want to see the last of me.'

`I'm going to have a child.'

The expression died utterly out of his face, out of his whole body. He looked at her with darkened eyes, whose look she could not understand at all: like some dark-flamed spirit looking at her.

`Say you're glad!' she pleaded, groping for his hand. And she saw a certain exultance spring up in him. But it was netted down by things she could not understand.

`It's the future,' he said.

`But aren't you glad?' she persisted.

`I have such a terrible mistrust of the future.'

`But you needn't be troubled by any responsibility. Clifford would have it as his own, he'd be glad.'

She saw him go pale, and recoil under this. He did not answer.

`Shall I go back to Clifford and put a little baronet into Wragby?' she asked.

He looked at her, pale and very remote. The ugly little grin flickered on his face.

`You wouldn't have to tell him who the father was?'

`Oh!' she said; `he'd take it even then, if I wanted him to.'

He thought for a time.

`Ay!' he said at last, to himself. `I suppose he would.'

There was silence. A big gulf was between them.

`But you don't want me to go back to Clifford, do you?' she asked him.

`What do you want yourself?' he replied.

`I want to live with you,' she said simply.

In spite of himself, little flames ran over his belly as he heard her say it, and he dropped his head. Then he looked up at her again, with those haunted eyes.

`If it's worth it to you,' he said. `I've got nothing.'

`You've got more than most men. Come, you know it,' she said.

`In one way, I know it.' He was silent for a time, thinking. Then he resumed: `They used to say I had too much of the woman in me. But it's not that. I'm not a woman not because I don't want to shoot birds, neither because I don't want to make money, or get on. I could have got on in the army, easily, but I didn't like the army. Though I could manage the men all right: they liked me and they had a bit of a holy fear of me when I got mad. No, it was stupid, dead-handed higher authority that made the army dead: absolutely fool-dead. I like men, and men like me. But I can't stand the twaddling bossy impudence of the people who run this world. That's why I can't get on. I hate the impudence of money, and I hate the impudence of class. So in the world as it is, what have I to offer a woman?'

`But why offer anything? It's not a bargain. It's just that we love one another,' she said.

`Nay, nay! It's more than that. Living is moving and moving on. My life won't go down the proper gutters, it just won't. So I'm a bit of a waste ticket by myself. And I've no business to take a woman into my life, unless my life does something and gets somewhere, inwardly at least, to keep us both fresh. A man must offer a woman some meaning in his life, if it's going to be an isolated life, and if she's a genuine woman. I can't be just your male concubine.'

`Why not?' she said.

`Why, because I can't. And you would soon hate it.'

`As if you couldn't trust me,' she said.

The grin flickered on his face.

`The money is yours, the position is yours, the decisions will lie with you. I'm not just my Lady's fucker, after all.'

`What else are you?'

`You may well ask. It no doubt is invisible. Yet I'm something to myself at least. I can see the point of my own existence, though I can quite understand nobody else's seeing it.'

`And will your existence have less point, if you live with me?'

He paused a long time before replying:

`It might.'

She too stayed to think about it.

`And what is the point of your existence?'

`I tell you, it's invisible. I don't believe in the world, not in money, nor in advancement, nor in the future of our civilization. If there's got to be a future for humanity, there'll have to be a very big change from what now is.'

`And what will the real future have to be like?'

`God knows! I can feel something inside me, all mixed up with a lot of rage. But what it really amounts to, I don't know.'

`Shall I tell you?' she said, looking into his face. `Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?'

`Tell me then,' he replied.

`It's the courage of your own tenderness, that's what it is: like when you put your hand on my tail and say I've got a pretty tail.'

The grin came flickering on his face.

`That!' he said.

Then he sat thinking.

`Ay!' he said. `You're right. It's that really. It's that all the way through. I knew it with the men. I had to be in touch with them, physically, and not go back on it. I had to be bodily aware of them and a bit tender to them, even if I put em through hell. It's a question of awareness, as Buddha said. But even he fought shy of the bodily awareness, and that natural physical tenderness, which is the best, even between men; in a proper manly way. Makes 'em really manly, not so monkeyish. Ay! it's tenderness, really; it's cunt-awareness. Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it's touch we're afraid of. We're only half-conscious, and half alive. We've got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another, a bit delicate and a bit tender. It's our crying need.'

She looked at him.

`Then why are you afraid of me?' she said.

He looked at her a long time before he answered.

`It's the money, really, and the position. It's the world in you.'

`But isn't there tenderness in me?' she said wistfully.

He looked down at her, with darkened, abstract eyes.

`Ay! It comes an' goes, like in me.'

`But can't you trust it between you and me?' she asked, gazing anxiously at him.

She saw his face all softening down, losing its armour. `Maybe!' he said. They were both silent.

`I want you to hold me in your arms,' she said. `I want you to tell me you are glad we are having a child.'

She looked so lovely and warm and wistful, his bowels stirred towards her.

`I suppose we can go to my room,' he said. `Though it's scandalous again.'

But she saw the forgetfulness of the world coming over him again, his face taking the soft, pure look of tender passion.

They walked by the remoter streets to Coburg Square, where he had a room at the top of the house, an attic room where he cooked for himself on a gas ring. It was small, but decent and tidy.

She took off her things, and made him do the same. She was lovely in the soft first flush of her pregnancy.

`I ought to leave you alone,' he said.

`No!' she said. `Love me! Love me, and say you'll keep me. Say you'll keep me! Say you'll never let me go, to the world nor to anybody.'

She crept close against him, clinging fast to his thin, strong naked body, the only home she had ever known.

`Then I'll keep thee,' he said. `If tha wants it, then I'll keep thee.'

He held her round and fast.

`And say you're glad about the child,' she repeated.

`Kiss it! Kiss my womb and say you're glad it's there.'

But that was more difficult for him.

`I've a dread of puttin' children i' th' world,' he said. `I've such a dread o' th' future for 'em.'

`But you've put it into me. Be tender to it, and that will be its future already. Kiss it!'

He quivered, because it was true. `Be tender to it, and that will be its future.'--At that moment he felt a sheer love for the woman. He kissed her belly and her mound of Venus, to kiss close to the womb and the foetus within the womb.

`Oh, you love me! You love me!' she said, in a little cry like one of her blind, inarticulate love cries. And he went in to her softly, feeling the stream of tenderness flowing in release from his bowels to hers, the bowels of compassion kindled between them.

And he realized as he went into her that this was the thing he had to do, to e into tender touch, without losing his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man. After all, if she had money and means, and he had none, he should be too proud and honourable to hold back his tenderness from her on that account. `I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings,' he said to himself, `and the touch of tenderness. And she is my mate. And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And she will stand behind me there. Thank God I've got a woman! Thank God I've got a woman who is with me, and tender and aware of me. Thank God she's not a bully, nor a fool. Thank God she's a tender, aware woman.' And as his seed sprang in her, his soul sprang towards her too, in the creative act that is far more than procreative.

She was quite determined now that there should be no parting between him and her. But the ways and means were still to settle.