Part 49

"Not when they're absolutely simple."

"How do you know she's simple?"

"Oh--because I'm not."

"Simplicity," said Nina, "would only give her more rope."

"Nina--there's one thing Nicky didn't tell us. He never let on that she was pretty. I suppose he thought that was more than we could bear."

"How do you know she's pretty?"

"That's how I see her. Very pretty, very soft and tender. Shy at first, and then very gently, very innocently letting herself go. And always rather sensuous and clinging."

"Poor idiot--she's done for if she clings. I'm not sorry for George, Jinny; I'm sorry for the woman. He'll lay her flat on the floor and wipe his boots on her."

Jane shrank back. "Nina," she said, "you loved him. And yet--you can tear him to pieces."

"You think I'm a beast, do you?"

"Yes. When you tear him--and before people, too."

She shrank a little further. Nina was now sitting on the floor with her back against Jane's knees.

"It's all very well for you," she said. "He wanted to care for you. He only wanted me--to care. That's what he is. He makes you care, he makes you show it, he drives you on and on. He gives nothing; he takes nothing. But he lets you strip yourself bare; he lets you bring him the soul out of your body, and then he turns round and treats you as if you were his cast-off mistress."

She laid her head back on Jane's knee, so that Jane saw her face foreshortened and, as it were, distorted.

"If I had been--if I'd been like any other woman, good or bad, he'd have been different."

Jane started at this sudden voice of her own thought.

It was as if some inscrutable, incredible portion of herself, some dark and fierce and sensual thing lay there at her feet. It was not incredible or inscrutable to itself. It was indeed splendidly unashamed. It gloried in itself and in its suffering. It lived on its own torture, violent and exalted; Jane could hardly bear its nearness and its utterance. But she was sorry for it. She hated to see it suffer.

It raised its head.

"Doesn't it look, Jinny, as if genius were the biggest curse a woman can be saddled with? It's giving you another sex inside you, and a stronger one, to plague you. When we want a thing we can't sit still like a woman and wait till it comes to us, or doesn't come. We go after it like a man; and if we can't get it peaceably we fight for it, as a man fights when he isn't a coward or a fool. And because we fight we're done for. And then, when we're down, the woman in us turns and rends us. But if we got what we wanted we'd be just like any other woman. As long," she added, "as we wanted it."

She got up and leaned against the chimney-piece looking down, rather like a man, on Jane.

"It's borne in on me," she said, "that the woman in us isn't meant to matter. She's simply the victim of the Will-to-do-things. It puts the bit into our mouths and drives us the way we must go. It's like a whip laid across our shoulders whenever we turn aside."

She paused in her vehemence.

"Jinny--have you ever reckoned with your beastly genius?"

Jane stirred in her corner. "I suppose," she said, "if it's any good I'll have to pay for it."

"You'll have to pay for it with everything you've got and with everything you haven't got and might have had. With a genius like yours, Jinny, there'll be no end to your paying. You may make up your mind to that."

"I wonder," said Jane, "how much George will have to pay?"

"Nothing. He'll make his wife pay. You'd have paid if he'd married you."

"I wonder. Nina--he was worth it. I'd have paid ten times over. So would you."