`Did you hate Bertha Coutts?' she asked him.

`Don't talk to me about her.'

`Yes! You must let me. Because once you liked her. And once you were as intimate with her as you are with me. So you have to tell me. Isn't it rather terrible, when you've been intimate with her, to hate her so? Why is it?'

`I don't know. She sort of kept her will ready against me, always, always: her ghastly female will: her freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she always kept her freedom against me, like vitriol in my face.'

`But she's not free of you even now. Does she still love you?'

`No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage, she must try to bully me.'

`But she must have loved you.'

`No! Well, in specks she did. She was drawn to me. And I think even that she hated. She loved me in moments. But she always took it back, and started bullying. Her deepest desire was to bully me, and there was no altering her. Her will was wrong, from the first.'

`But perhaps she felt you didn't really love her, and she wanted to make you.'

`My God, it was bloody making.'

`But you didn't really love her, did you? You did her that wrong.'

`How could I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always ripped me up. No, don't let's talk of it. It was a doom, that was. And she was a doomed woman. This last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat, if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman! If only I could have shot her, and ended the whole misery! It ought to be allowed. When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own will, her own will set against everything, then it's fearful, and she should be shot at last.'

`And shouldn't men be shot at last, if they get possessed by their own will?'

`Ay!--the same! But I must get free of her, or she'll be at me again. I wanted to tell you. I must get a divorce if I possibly can. So we must be careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never, never could stand it if she came down on me and you.'

Connie pondered this.

`Then we can't be together?' she said.

`Not for six months or so. But I think my divorce will go through in September; then till March.'

`But the baby will probably be born at the end of February,' she said.

He was silent.

`I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead,' he said.

`It's not being very tender to them,' she said.

`Tender to them? Yea, even then the tenderest thing you could do for them, perhaps, would be to give them death. They can't live! They only frustrate life. Their souls are awful inside them. Death ought to be sweet to them. And I ought to be allowed to shoot them.'

`But you wouldn't do it,' she said.

`I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I'd shoot them.'

`Then perhaps it is just as well you daren't.'

`Well.'

Connie had now plenty to think of. It was evident he wanted absolutely to be free of Bertha Coutts. And she felt he was right. The last attack had been too grim.--This meant her living alone, till spring. Perhaps she could get divorced from Clifford. But how? If Mellors were named, then there was an end to his divorce. How loathsome! Couldn't one go right away, to the far ends of the earth, and be free from it all?

One could not. The far ends of the world are not five minutes from Charing Cross, nowadays. While the wireless is active, there are no far ends of the earth. Kings of Dahomey and Lamas of Tibet listen in to London and New York.

Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary, not to get mangled by it.

Connie confided in her father.

`You see, Father, he was Clifford's game-keeper: but he was an officer in the army in India. Only he is like Colonel C. E. Florence, who preferred to become a private soldier again.'

Sir Malcolm, however, had no sympathy with the unsatisfactory mysticism of the famous C. E. Florence. He saw too much advertisement behind all the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self-abasement.

`Where did your game-keeper spring from?' asked Sir Malcolm irritably.

`He was a collier's son in Tevershall. But he's absolutely presentable.'

The knighted artist became more angry.

`Looks to me like a gold-digger,' he said. `And you're a pretty easy gold-mine, apparently.'

`No, Father, it's not like that. You'd know if you saw him. He's a man. Clifford always detested him for not being humble.'

`Apparently he had a good instinct, for once.'

What Sir Malcolm could not bear was the scandal of his daughter's having an intrigue with a game-keeper. He did not mind the intrigue: he minded the scandal.

`I care nothing about the fellow. He's evidently been able to get round you all right. But, by God, think of all the talk. Think of your step-mother how she'll take it!'

`I know,' said Connie. `Talk is beastly: especially if you live in society. And he wants so much to get his own divorce. I thought we might perhaps say it was another man's child, and not mention Mellors' name at all.'

`Another man's! What other man's?'

`Perhaps Duncan Forbes. He has been our friend all his life.'

`And he's a fairly well-known artist. And he's fond of me.'

`Well I'm damned! Poor Duncan! And what's he going to get out of it?'

`I don't know. But he might rather like it, even.'

`He might, might he? Well, he's a funny man if he does. Why, you've never even had an affair with him, have you?'

`No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him.'

`My God, what a generation!'

`He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to.'

`God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything.'

`Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?'

`My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!'

`I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?'

`Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long.'

`Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk.'

`But it was different, I assure you.'

`It's always different.'

Hilda arrived, also furious when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the thought of a public scandal about her sister and a game-keeper. Too, too humiliating!

`Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?' said Connie.

But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over.

`But will you see him, Father?'

Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down.

Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whisky, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed.

This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily:

`Well, young man, and what about my daughter?'

The grin flickered on Mellors' face.

`Well, Sir, and what about her?'

`You've got a baby in her all right.'

`I have that honour!' grinned Mellors.

`Honour, by God!' Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. `Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what?'

`Good!'

`I'll bet it was! Ha-ha! My daughter, chip of the old block, what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking, myself. Though her mother, oh, holy saints!' He rolled his eyes to heaven. `But you warmed her up, oh, you warmed her up, I can see that. Ha-ha! My blood in her! You set fire to her haystack all right. Ha-ha-ha! I was jolly glad of it, I can tell you. She needed it. Oh, she's a nice girl, she's a nice girl, and I knew she'd be good going, if only some damned man would set her stack on fire! Ha-ha-ha! A game-keeper, eh, my boy! Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Ha-ha! But now, look here, speaking seriously, what are we going to do about it? Speaking seriously, you know!'

Speaking seriously, they didn't get very far. Mellors, though a little tipsy, was much the soberer of the two. He kept the conversation as intelligent as possible: which isn't saying much.

`So you're a game-keeper! Oh, you're quite right! That sort of game is worth a man's while, eh, what? The test of a woman is when you pinch her bottom. You can tell just by the feel of her bottom if she's going to come up all right. Ha-ha! I envy you, my boy. How old are you?'

`Thirty-nine.'

The knight lifted his eyebrows.

`As much as that! Well, you've another good twenty years, by the look of you. Oh, game-keeper or not, you're a good cock. I can see that with one eye shut. Not like that blasted Clifford! A lily-livered hound with never a fuck in him, never had. I like you, my boy, I'll bet you've a good cod on you; oh, you're a bantam, I can see that. You're a fighter. Game-keeper! Ha-ha, by crikey, I wouldn't trust my game to you! But look here, seriously, what are we going to do about it? The world's full of blasted old women.'

Seriously, they didn't do anything about it, except establish the old free-masonry of male sensuality between them.

`And look here, my boy, if ever I can do anything for you, you can rely on me. Game-keeper! Christ, but it's rich! I like it! Oh, I like it! Shows the girl's got spunk. What? After all, you know, she has her own income, moderate, moderate, but above starvation. And I'll leave her what I've got. By God, I will. She deserves it for showing spunk, in a world of old women. I've been struggling to get myself clear of the skirts of old women for seventy years, and haven't managed it yet. But you're the man, I can see that.'