'It
wouldn't matter if she were a hundred years old, a thousand--it would
be all the same to me, so that she can UNDERSTAND.' He shut his eyes
with a little snap.
Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good looking,
then? Suddenly she laughed.
'I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that!' she
said. 'I am ugly enough, aren't I?'
He looked at her with an artist's sudden, critical, estimating eye.
'You are beautiful,' he said, 'and I am glad of it. But it isn't
that--it isn't that,' he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. 'It
is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For
me, I am little, chetif, insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be
strong and handsome, then. But it is the ME--' he put his fingers to
his mouth, oddly--'it is the ME that is looking for a mistress, and my
ME is waiting for the THEE of the mistress, for the match to my
particular intelligence. You understand?'
'Yes,' she said, 'I understand.'
'As for the other, this amour--' he made a gesture, dashing his hand
aside, as if to dash away something troublesome--'it is unimportant,
unimportant.
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