Cold and derisive her queer female mind stood apart, and though she lay perfectly still, her impulse was to heave her loins, and throw the man out, escape his ugly grip, and the butting overriding of his absurd haunches. His body was a foolish, impudent, imperfect thing, a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness. For surely a complete evolution would eliminate this performance, this “function.”
And yet when he had finished, soon over, and lay very very still, receding into silence, and a strange, motionless distance, far, farther than the horizon of her awareness, her heart began to weep. She could feel him ebbing away, ebbing away, leaving her there like a stone on a shore. He was withdrawing, his spirit was leaving her. He knew.
And in real grief, tormented by her own double consciousness and reaction, she began to weep. He took no notice, or did not even know. The storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him.
“Ay!” he said, “It was no good that time. You wasn’t there.” So he knew! Her sobs became violent.
“But what’s amiss?” he said. “It’s once in a while that way.”
“I … I can’t love you,” she sobbed, suddenly feeling her heart breaking.
“Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There’s no law says as tha’s got to. Ta’e it for what it is.”
He still lay with his hand on her breast. But she had drawn both her hands from him.
His words were small comfort. She sobbed aloud.
“Nay, nay,” he said. “Ta’e the thick wi’ th’ thin. This wor’ a bit o’ thin for once.”