ver
trick played on an unsuspecting person; to 'do' somebody always gave her
satisfaction. Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility and
the refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse
word, so far as her limited vocabulary reached she had a passion for
euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of
trousers but referred to them as nether garments; she thought it slightly
indelicate to blow her nose and did it in a deprecating way. She was
dreadfully anaemic and suffered from the dyspepsia which accompanies that
ailing. Philip was repelled by her flat breast and narrow hips, and he
hated the vulgar way in which she did her hair. He loathed and despised
himself for loving her.

The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just as he had felt
sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at school. He had struggled against
the superior strength till his own strength was gone, and he was rendered
quite powerless--he remembered the peculiar languor he had felt in his
limbs, almost as though he were paralysed--so that he could not help
himself at all. He might have been dead. He felt just that same weakness
now. He loved the woman so that he knew he had never loved before. He did
not mind her faults of person or of character, he thought he loved them
too: at all events they meant nothing to him. It did not seem himself that
was concerned; he felt that he had been seized by some strange force that
moved him against his will, contrary to his interests; and because he had
a passion for freedom he hated the chains which bound him. He laughed at
himself when he thought how often he had longed to experience the
overwhelming passion. He cursed himself because he had given way to it. He
thought of the beginnings; nothing of all this would have happened if he
had not gone into the shop with Dunsford. The whole thing was his own
fault. Except for his ridiculous vanity he would never have troubled
himself with the ill-mannered slut.

At all events the occurrences of that evening had finished the whole
affair. Unless he was lost to all sense of shame he could not go back. He
wanted passionately to get rid of the love that obsessed him; it was
degrading and hateful. He must prevent himself from thinking of her. In a
little while the anguish he suffered must grow less. His mind went back to
the past. He wondered whether Emily Wilkinson and Fanny Price had endured
on his account anyth