He looked at her weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious he couldn't even accept the fact of the existence of Mellors, in any connection with his own life. It was sheer, unspeakable, impotent hate.
"And do you mean to say you'd marry him?—and bear his foul name?" he asked at length.
"Yes, that's what I want."
He was again as if dumbfounded.
"Yes!" he said at last. "That proves that what I've always thought about you is correct: you're not normal, you're not in your right senses. You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity, the nostalgie de la boue."
Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation of good, and people like Mellors and Connie the incarnation of mud, of evil. He seemed to be growing vague, inside a nimbus.
"So don't you think you'd better divorce me and have done with it?" she said.
"No! You can go where you like, but I shan't divorce you," he said idiotically.
"Why not?"
He was silent, in the silence of imbecile obstinacy.
"Would you even let the child be legally yours, and your heir?" she said.
"I care nothing about the child."
"But if it's a boy it will be legally your son, and it will inherit your title, and have Wragby."
"I care nothing about that," he said.
"But you must! I shall prevent the child from being legally yours, if I can. I'd so much rather it were illegitimate, and mine: if it can't be Mellors'."
"Do as you like about that."
He was immovable.
"And won't you divorce me?" she said. "You can use Duncan as a pretext! There'd be no need to bring in the real name. Duncan doesn't mind."
"I shall never divorce you," he said, as if a nail had been driven in.
"But why? Because I want you to?"
