ce.

She owned his body and enjoyed it with all the delight and
carelessness of a possessor. But he had become gradually afraid
of her body. He wanted her, he wanted her endlessly. But there
had come a tension into his desire, a constraint which prevented
his enjoying the delicious approach and the lovable close of the
endless embrace. He was afraid. His will was always tense,
fixed.

Her final examination was at midsummer. She insisted on
sitting for it, although she had neglected her work during the
past months. He also wanted her to go in for the degree. Then,
he thought, she would be satisfied. Secretly he hoped she would
fail, so that she would be more glad of him.

"Would you rather live in India or in England when we are
married?" he asked her.

"Oh, in India, by far," she said, with a careless lack of
consideration which annoyed him.

Once she said, with heat:

"I shall be glad to leave England. Everything is so meagre
and paltry, it is so unspiritual--I hate democracy."

He became angry to hear her talk like this, he did not know
why. Somehow, he could not bear it, when she attacked things. It
was as if she were attacking him.

"What do you mean?" he asked her, hostile. "Why do you hate
democracy?"

"Only the greedy and ugly people come to the top in a
democracy," she said, "because they're the only people who will
push themselves there. Only degenerate races are
democratic."

"What do you want then--an aristocracy?" he asked,
secretly moved. He always felt that by rights he belonged to the
ruling aristocracy. Yet to hear her speak for his class pained
him with a curious, painful pleasure. He felt he was acquiescing
in something illegal, taking to himself some wrong,
reprehensible advantages.

"I do want an aristocracy," she cried. "And I'd far
rather have an aristocracy of birth than of money. Who are the
aristocrats now--who are chosen as the best to rule? Those
who have money and the brains for money. It doesn't matter what
else they have: but they must have money-brains,--because
they are ruling in the name of money."

"The people elect the government," he said.

"I know they do. But what are the people? Each one of them is
a money-interest. I hate it, that anybody is my equal who has
the same amount of money as I have. I know I am better
than all of them. I hate them. They are not my equals. I hate
equality on a money basis. It is the equality of dirt."

Her eyes blazed at him, he f