Skelmersdale, in a mood between remorse and love and self-
immolation, and then a sunlit young woman with a leaping stride in
her paces, passed across his heavens, pointing to Asia and Utopia
and forbidding even another thought of the banns. . . .
"You will kiss me good-bye, dear, won't you?" said Mrs.
Skelmersdale, brimming over. "You will do that."
He couldn't keep his arm from her little shoulders. And as their
lips touched he suddenly found himself weeping also. . . .
His spirit went limping from that interview. She chose to stay
behind in her chair and think, she said, and each time he turned
back she was sitting in the same attitude looking at him as he
receded, and she had one hand on the chair back and her arm drawn up
to it. The third time he waved his hat clumsily, and she started
and then answered with her hand. Then the trees hid her. . . .
This sex business was a damnable business. If only because it made
one hurt women. . . .
He had trampled on Mrs. Skelmersdale, he had hurt and disappointed
his mother. Was he a brute? Was he a cold-blooded prig? What was
this aristocracy? Was his belief anything more than a theory? Was
he only dreaming of a debt to the men in the quarry, to the miners,
to the men in the stokeholes, to the drudges on the fields? And
while he dreamt he wounded and distressed real living creatures in
the sleep-walk of his dreaming.
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