Sons and Lovers - Daimon Club

"No; I can only see where he was different from you."
But he felt she had a grudge against him.
One evening, as they were coming home over the fields,
she startled him by asking:
"Do you think it's worth it--the--the sex part?"
"The act of loving, itself?"
"Yes; is it worth anything to you?"
"But how can you separate it?" he said. "It's the culmination
of everything. All our intimacy culminates then."
"Not for me," she said.
He was silent. A flash of hate for her came up. After all,
she was dissatisfied with him, even there, where he thought they
fulfilled each other. But he believed her too implicitly.
"I feel," she continued slowly, "as if I hadn't got you,
as if all of you weren't there, and as if it weren't ME you were taking--
-"
"Who, then?"
"Something just for yourself. It has been fine, so that I
daren't think of it. But is it ME you want, or is it IT?"
He again felt guilty. Did he leave Clara out of count,
and take simply women? But he thought that was splitting a hair.
"When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I DID feel as if I
had all of him," she said.
"And it was better?" he asked.
"Yes, yes; it was more whole. I don't say you haven't given
me more than he ever gave me."
"Or could give you."
"Yes, perhaps; but you've never given me yourself."
He knitted his brows angrily.
"If I start to make love to you," he said, "I just go like
a leaf down the wind."
"And leave me out of count," she said.
"And then is it nothing to you?" he asked, almost rigid