elt as if she wanted to destroy
him. She had gripped him and was trying to break him. His anger
sprang up, against her. At least he would fight for his
existence with her. A hard, blind resistance possessed him.

"I don't care about money," he said, "neither do I
want to put my finger in the pie. I am too sensitive about my
finger."

"What is your finger to me?" she cried, in a passion. "You
with your dainty fingers, and your going to India because you
will be one of the somebodies there! It's a mere dodge, your
going to India."

"In what way a dodge?" he cried, white with anger and
fear.

"You think the Indians are simpler than us, and so you'll
enjoy being near them and being a lord over them," she said.
"And you'll feel so righteous, governing them for their own
good. Who are you, to feel righteous? What are you righteous
about, in your governing? Your governing stinks. What do you
govern for, but to make things there as dead and mean as they
are here!"

"I don't feel righteous in the least," he said.

"Then what do you feel? It's all such a nothingness,
what you feel and what you don't feel."

"What do you feel yourself?" he said. "Aren't you righteous
in your own mind?"

"Yes, I am, because I'm against you, and all your old, dead
things," she cried.

She seemed, with the last words, uttered in hard knowledge,
to strike down the flag that he kept flying. He felt cut off at
the knees, a figure made worthless. A horrible sickness gripped
him, as if his legs were really cut away, and he could not move,
but remained a crippled trunk, dependent, worthless. The ghastly
sense of helplessness, as if he were a mere figure that did not
exist vitally, made him mad, beside himself.

Now, even whilst he was with her, this death of himself came
over him, when he walked about like a body from which all
individual life is gone. In this state he neither heard nor saw
nor felt, only the mechanism of his life continued.

He hated her, as far as, in this state, he could hate. His
cunning suggested to him all the ways of making her esteem him.
For she did not esteem him. He left her and did not write to
her. He flirted with other women, with Gudrun.

This last made her very fierce. She was still fiercely
jealous of his body. In passionate anger she upbraided him
because, not being man enough to satisfy one woman, he hung
round others.

["Don't I satisfy you?" he asked of her, again going white to the throat.

"No