`Why yes, Clifford. You can't be so adored without making some slight return. Saint George of Cappadocia was nothing to you, in her eyes.'
`And do you think she'll come?'
`Oh, she blushed! and looked quite beautiful for a moment, poor thing! Why don't men marry the women who would really adore them?'
`The women start adoring too late. But did she say she'd come?'
`Oh!' Connie imitated the breathless Miss Bentley, `your Ladyship, if ever I should dare to presume!'
`Dare to presume! how absurd! But I hope to God she won't turn up. And how was her tea?'
`Oh, Lipton's and very strong. But Clifford, do you realize you are the Roman de la rose of Miss Bentley and lots like her?'
`I'm not flattered, even then.'
`They treasure up every one of your pictures in the illustrated papers, and probably pray for you every night. It's rather wonderful.'
She went upstairs to change.
That evening he said to her:
`You do think, don't you, that there is something eternal in marriage?'
She looked at him.
`But Clifford, you make eternity sound like a lid or a long, long chain that trailed after one, no matter how far one went.'
He looked at her, annoyed.
`What I mean,' he said, `is that if you go to Venice, you won't go in the hopes of some love affair that you can take au grand sérieux, will you?'
`A love affair in Venice au grand sérieux? No. I assure you! No, I'd never take a love affair in Venice more than au très petit sérieux.'
She spoke with a queer kind of contempt. He knitted his brows, looking at her.
Coming downstairs in the morning, she found the keeper's dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside Clifford's room, and whimpering very faintly.
`Why, Flossie!' she said softly. `What are you doing here?'
And she quietly opened Clifford's door. Clifford was sitting up in bed, with the bed-table and typewriter pushed aside, and the keeper was standing at attention at the foot of the bed. Flossie ran in. With a faint gesture of head and eyes, Mellors ordered her to the door again, and she slunk out.
`Oh, good morning, Clifford!' Connie said. `I didn't know you were busy.' Then she looked at the keeper, saying good morning to him. He murmured his reply, looking at her as if vaguely. But she felt a whiff of passion touch her, from his mere presence.
`Did I interrupt you, Clifford? I'm sorry.'