more lethargically
than other children, of women who yielded through feeble-wittedness or
need of money to men who did not love them enough to marry them, and so
were born below the average of the race, dullards that made life ugly,
or parasites that had to be kept on honest people's money in prisons or
workhouses. Or, like, Richard, they had been conceived more intensely
than other children, of love so passionate that it had drawn together
men and women separated by social prohibitions. So they were born to
rule like kings over the lawfully begotten, so that married folk raged
to see that, because they had known no more than ordinary pleasure,
their seed was to be penalised by servitude. Richard would always be
adored by all but the elderly and the impotent.

Because vitality itself had been kneaded into his flesh by his parents'
passion he would not die until he was an old, old man and needed rest
after interminable victories; and because it played through his mind
like lightning, he would always have power over men and material, and
even over himself. Since he had been begotten when beauty, like a strong
goddess, pressed together the bodies of his father and mother, she would
disclose more of her works to him than to other sons of men with whose
begetting she was not concerned. Even now, every time Marion let him
take her to the turn of the road past Roothing, where he could show her
the oak cut like a club on a playing-card and aflame with autumn that
stood on the hill's edge, against the far grey desolation of Kerith
Island and the sunless tides, he knew such joy as one would have thought
beyond a child's achievement. He would get as much out of life as any
man that ever lived. At the thought of the contrast between this heir to
everything and the other child, that poor waif who all his life long
would be sent round to the back door, tears rushed to her eyes, and she
cried indignantly, "Oh, I do think you might be nice to Roger." Richard
looked at her sharply. "What, do you really mind about it, mummie?" The
surprise in his tone told her the worst about her forced and mechanical
kindnesses to Roger. "Oh, more than anything," she almost sobbed. "Very
well, I'll be nice to him," he answered shortly, adding after a minute,
with a deliberate impishness, as if he hated the moment and wanted to
burlesque it, "After all, mums, I never do hit him...." But for the rest
of the evening the golden glow of his face was clouded