off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried heavenwards along with their own thin sticks.
"But I am married already," she said. "I can't leave Clifford, you know."
"Why not? but why not?" he cried. "He'll hardly know you've gone, after six months. He doesn't know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he's entirely wrapped up in himself."
Connie felt there was truth in this. But she also felt that Mick was hardly making a display of selflessness.
"Aren't all men wrapped up in themselves?" she asked.
"Oh, more or less, I allow. A man's got to be, to get through. But that's not the point. The point is, what sort of a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can't he? If he can't he's no right to the woman. . ." He paused and gazed at her with his full, hazel eyes, almost hypnotic. "Now I consider," he added, "I can give a woman the darndest good time she can ask for. I think I can guarantee myself."
"And what sort of a good time?" asked Connie, gazing on him still with a sort of amazement, that looked like thrill; and underneath feeling nothing at all.
"Every sort of a good time, damn it, every sort! Dress, jewels up to a point, any night-club you like, know anybody you want to know, live the pace . . . travel and be somebody wherever you go. . . Darn it, every sort of good time."
He spoke it almost in a brilliancy of triumph, and Connie looked at him as if dazzled, and really feeling nothing at all. Hardly even the surface of her mind was tickled at the glowing prospects he offered her. Hardly even her most outside self responded, that at any other time would have been thrilled. She just got no feeling from it all, she couldn't "go off." She just sat and stared and looked dazzled, and felt nothing, only somewhere she smelt the extraordinarily unpleasant smell of the bitch-goddess.
Mick sat on tenterhooks, leaning forward in his chair, glaring at her almost hysterically: and whether he was more anxious out of vanity for her to say Yes! or whether he was more panic-stricken for fear she should say Yes!—who can tell?
"I should have to think about it," she said. "I couldn't say now.
