"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 with chagrin.
"It's something; and sometimes you have carried me away--right away--I know--and--I reverence you for it--but--"
"Don't 'but' me," he said, kissing her quickly, as a fire ran through him.
She submitted, and was silent.
It was true as he said. As a rule, when he started love-making, the emotion was strong enough to carry with it everything--reason, soul, blood--in a great sweep, like the Trent carries bodily its back-swirls and intertwinings, noiselessly. Gradually the little criticisms, the little sensations, were lost, thought also went, everything borne along in one flood. He became, not a man with a mind, but a great instinct. His hands were like creatures, living; his limbs, his body, were all life and consciousness, subject to no will of his, but living in themselves. Just as he was, so it seemed the vigorous, wintry stars were strong also with life. He and they struck with the same pulse of fire, and the same joy of strength which held the bracken-frond stiff near his eyes held his own body firm. It was as if he, and the stars, and the dark herbage, and Clara were licked up in an immense tongue of flame, which tore onwards and upwards. Everything rushed along in living beside him; everything was still, perfect in itself, along with him. This wonderful stillness in each thing in itself, while it was being borne along in a very ecstasy of living, seemed the highest point of bliss.