Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rath...

Connie and Clifford came home to Wragby in the autumn of 1920. Miss Chatterley, still disgusted at her brother’s defection, had departed and was living in a little flat in London. Wragby was a long lo...

Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness. Out of her disconnection, a restlessness was taking possession of her like madness. It twitched her limbs when she didn’t want to twitch them. It ...

Connie always had a foreboding of the hopelessness of her affair with Mick, as people called him. Yet other men seemed to mean nothing to her. She was attached to Clifford. He wanted a good deal of he...

On a frosty morning with a little February sun, Clifford and Connie went for a walk across the park to the wood. That is, Clifford chuffed in his motor-chair, and Connie walked beside him. The hard ai...

“Why don’t men and women really like one another nowadays?” Connie asked Tommy Dukes, who was more or less her oracle. “Oh, but they do! I don’t think since the human species was invented, there has e...

When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for a long time: took off all her clothes, and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking for, o...

Mrs. Bolton also kept a cherishing eye on Connie, feeling she must extend to her her female and professional protection. She was always urging her ladyship to walk out, to drive to Uthwaite, to be in ...

Connie was surprised at her own feeling of aversion from Clifford. What is more, she felt she had always really disliked him. Not hate: there was no passion in it. But a profound physical dislike. Alm...

Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at s...

Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffrey’s father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffrey’s mothe...

Connie went to the wood directly after lunch. It was really a lovely day, the first dandelions making suns, the first daisies so white. The hazel thicket was a lacework of half-open leaves, and the la...

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning, the pear blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world, in a wonder of white here and there. It was cruel for Clifford, wh...

When she got near the park gate, she heard the click of the latch. He was there, then, in the darkness of the wood, and had seen her! “You are good and early,” he said out of the dark. “Was everything...

There was a letter from Hilda on the breakfast tray. “Father is going to London this week, and I shall call for you on Thursday week, June 17th. You must be ready so that we can go at once. I don’t wa...

Connie arrived home to an ordeal of cross-questioning. Clifford had been out at teatime, had come in just before the storm, and where was her ladyship? Nobody knew, only Mrs. Bolton suggested she had ...

“You see, Hilda,” said Connie after lunch, when they were nearing London, “you have never known either real tenderness or real sensuality: and if you do know them, with the same person, it makes a gre...

She had to make up her mind what to do. She would leave Venice on the Saturday that he was leaving Wragby: in six days time. This would bring her to London on the Monday following, and she would then ...

“Dear Clifford, I am afraid what you foresaw has happened. I am really in love with another man, and I do hope you will divorce me. I am staying at present with Duncan in his flat. I told you he was a...