BREADALBY was a Georgian house with Corinthian pillars, standing among the softer, greener hills of Derbyshire, not far from Cromford. In front, it looked over a lawn, over a few trees, down to a string of fish-ponds in the hollow of the silent park. At the back were trees, among which were to be found the stables, and the big kitchen garden, behind which was a wood.
It was a very quiet place, some miles from the high-road, back from the Derwent Valley, outside the show scenery. Silent and forsaken, the golden stucco showed between the trees, the house-front looked down the park, unchanged and unchanging.
Of late, however, Hermione had lived a good deal at the house. She had turned away from London, away from Oxford, towards the silence of the country. Her father was mostly absent, abroad, she was either alone in the house, with her visitors, of whom there were always several, or she had with her her brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of Parliament. He always came down when the House was not sitting, seemed always to be present in Breadalby, although he was most conscientious in his attendance to duty.
The summer was just coming in when Ursula and Gudrun went to stay the second time with Hermione. Coming along in the car, after they had entered the park, they looked across the dip, where the fish-ponds lay in silence, at the pillared front of the house, sunny and small like an English drawing of the old school, on the brow of the green hill, against the trees. There were small figures on the green lawn, women in lavender and yellow moving to the shade of the enormous, beautifully balanced cedar tree.
`Isn't it complete!' said Gudrun. `It is as final as an old aquatint.' She spoke with some resentment in her voice, as if she were captivated unwillingly, as if she must admire against her will.
`Do you love it?' asked Ursula.
`I don't love it, but in its way, I think it is quite complete.'
The motor-car ran down the hill and up again in one breath, and they were curving to the side door. A parlour-maid appeared, and then Hermione, coming forward with her pale face lifted, and her hands outstretched, advancing straight to the new-comers, her voice singing:
`Here you are -- I'm so glad to see you --' she kissed Gudrun -- `so glad to see you --' she kissed Ursula and remained with her arm round her. `Are you very tired?'
`Not at all tired,' said Ursula.
`Are you tired, Gudrun?'
`Not at all, thanks,' said Gudrun.
`No --' drawled Hermione. And she stood and looked at them. The two girls were embarrassed because she would not move into the house, but must have her little scene of welcome there on the path. The servants waited.
`Come in,' said Hermione at last, having fully taken in the pair of them. Gudrun was the more beautiful and attractive, she had decided again, Ursula was more physical, more womanly. She admired Gudrun's dress more. It was of green poplin, with a loose coat above it, of broad, dark-green and dark-brown stripes. The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, the colour of new hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and orange, the stockings were dark green, the shoes black. It was a good get-up, at once fashionable and individual. Ursula, in dark blue, was more ordinary, though she also looked well.
Hermione herself wore a dress of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, even rather dirty.
`You would like to see your rooms now, wouldn't you! Yes. We will go up now, shall we?'
Ursula was glad when she could be left alone in her room. Hermione lingered so long, made such a stress on one. She stood so near to one, pressing herself near upon one, in a way that was most embarrassing and oppressive. She seemed to hinder one's workings.
Lunch was served on the lawn, under the great tree, whose thick, blackish boughs came down close to the grass. There were present a young Italian woman, slight and fashionable, a young, athletic-looking Miss Bradley, a learned, dry Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh, there was Rupert Birkin, and then a woman secretary, a Fraulein Marz, young and slim and pretty.
The food was very good, that was one thing. Gudrun, critical of everything, gave it her full approval. Ursula loved the situation, the white table by the cedar tree, the scent of new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with far-off deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn about the place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delightful, precious past, trees and deer and silence, like a dream.
But in spirit she was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation rather than a stream.
The attitude was mental and very wearying. Only the elderly sociologist, whose mental fibre was so tough as to be insentient, seemed to be thoroughly happy. Birkin was down in the mouth. Hermione appeared, with amazing persistence, to wish to ridicule him and make him look ignominious in the eyes of everybody. And it was surprising how she seemed to succeed, how helpless he seemed against her. He looked completely insignificant. Ursula and Gudrun, both very unused, were mostly silent, listening to the slow, rhapsodic sing-song of Hermione, or the verbal sallies of Sir Joshua, or the prattle of Fraulein, or the responses of the other two women.
Luncheon was over, coffee was brought out on the grass, the party left the table and sat about in lounge chairs, in the shade or in the sunshine as they wished. Fraulein departed into the house, Hermione took up her embroidery, the little Contessa took a book, Miss Bradley was weaving a basket out of fine grass, and there they all were on the lawn in the early summer afternoon, working leisurely and spattering with half-intellectual, deliberate talk.
Suddenly there was the sound of the brakes and the shutting off of a motor-car.
`There's Salsie!' sang Hermione, in her slow, amusing sing-song. And laying down her work, she rose slowly, and slowly passed over the lawn, round the bushes, out of sight.
`Who is it?' asked Gudrun.
`Mr Roddice -- Miss Roddice's brother -- at least, I suppose it's he,' said Sir Joshua.
`Salsie, yes, it is her brother,' said the little Contessa, lifting her head for a moment from her book, and speaking as if to give information, in her slightly deepened, guttural English.
They all waited. And then round the bushes came the tall form of Alexander Roddice, striding romantically like a Meredith hero who remembers Disraeli. He was cordial with everybody, he was at once a host, with an easy, offhand hospitality that he had learned for Hermione's friends. He had just come down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere of the House of Commons made itself felt over the lawn: the Home Secretary had said such and such a thing, and he, Roddice, on the other hand, thought such and such a thing, and had said so-and-so to the PM.
Now Hermione came round the bushes with Gerald Crich. He had come along with Alexander. Gerald was presented to everybody, was kept by Hermione for a few moments in full view, then he was led away, still by Hermione. He was evidently her guest of the moment.
There had been a split in the Cabinet; the minister for Education had resigned owing to adverse criticism. This started a conversation on education.
`Of course,' said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, `there can be no reason, no excuse for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.' She seemed to rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: `Vocational education isn't education, it is the close of education.'
Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and prepared for action.
`Not necessarily,' he said. `But isn't education really like gymnastics, isn't the end of education the production of a well-trained, vigorous, energetic mind?'
`Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,' cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord.
Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing.
`Well --' rumbled Hermione, `I don't know. To me the pleasure of knowing is so great, so wonderful -- nothing has meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge -- no, I am sure -- nothing.'
`What knowledge, for example, Hermione?' asked Alexander.
Hermione lifted her face and rumbled -
`M -- m -- m -- I don't know . . . But one thing was the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so uplifted, so unbounded . . .'
Birkin looked at her in a white fury.
`What do you want to feel unbounded for?' he said sarcastically. `You don't want to be unbounded.'
Hermione recoiled in offence.
`Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,' said Gerald. `It's like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the Pacific.'
`Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,' murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.
`Not necessarily in Dariayn,' said Gerald, while Ursula began to laugh.
Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched:
`Yes, it is the greatest thing in life -- to know. It is really to be happy, to be free.'
`Knowledge is, of course, liberty,' said Mattheson.
`In compressed tabloids,' said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind.
`What does that mean, Rupert?' sang Hermione, in a calm snub.
`You can only have knowledge, strictly,' he replied, `of things concluded, in the past. It's like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.'
`Can one have knowledge only of the past?' asked the Baronet, pointedly. `Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?'
`Yes,' said Birkin.
`There is a most beautiful thing in my book,' suddenly piped the little Italian woman. `It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.'
There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa.
`See!' said the Contessa.
`Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the street,' she read.
Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet's, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.
`What is the book?' asked Alexander, promptly.
`Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,' said the little foreigner, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself.
`An old American edition,' said Birkin.
`Ha! -- of course -- translated from the French,' said Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. `Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans la rue.'
He looked brightly round the company.
`I wonder what the "hurriedly" was,' said Ursula.
They all began to guess.
And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly.
After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.
`Would you like to come for a walk?' said Hermione to each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners marshalled for exercise. Birkin only refused.
`Will you come for a walk, Rupert?'
`No, Hermione.'
`But are you sure?'
`Quite sure.' There was a second's hesitation.
`And why not?' sang Hermione's question. It made her blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to walk with her in the park.
`Because I don't like trooping off in a gang,' he said.
Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she said, with a curious stray calm:
`Then we'll leave a little boy behind, if he's sulky.'
And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it merely made him stiff.
She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to wave her handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laughter, singing out:
`Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.'
`Good-bye, impudent hag,' he said to himself.
They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show them the wild daffodils on a little slope. `This way, this way,' sang her leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all to come this way. The daffodils were pretty, but who could see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment by this time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun, mocking and objective, watched and registered everything.
They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the stag, as if he too were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. He was male, so she must exert some kind of power over him. They trailed home by the fish-ponds, and Hermione told them about the quarrel of two male swans, who had striven for the love of the one lady. She chuckled and laughed as she told how the ousted lover had sat with his head buried under his wing, on the gravel.
When they arrived back at the house, Hermione stood on the lawn and sang out, in a strange, small, high voice that carried very far:
`Rupert! Rupert!' The first syllable was high and slow, the second dropped down. `Roo-o-opert.'
But there was no answer. A maid appeared.
`Where is Mr Birkin, Alice?' asked the mild straying voice of Hermione. But under the straying voice, what a persistent, almost insane will!
`I think he's in his room, madam.'
`Is he?'
Hermione went slowly up the stairs, along the corridor, singing out in her high, small call:
`Ru-oo-pert! Ru-oo pert!'
She came to his door, and tapped, still crying: `Roo-pert.'
`Yes,' sounded his voice at last.
`What are you doing?'
The question was mild and curious.
There was no answer. Then he opened the door.
`We've come back,' said Hermione. `The daffodils are so beautiful.'
`Yes,' he said, `I've seen them.'
She looked at him with her long, slow, impassive look, along her cheeks.
`Have you?' she echoed. And she remained looking at him. She was stimulated above all things by this conflict with him, when he was like a sulky boy, helpless, and she had him safe at Breadalby. But underneath she knew the split was coming, and her hatred of him was subconscious and intense.
`What were you doing?' she reiterated, in her mild, indifferent tone. He did not answer, and she made her way, almost unconsciously into his room. He had taken a Chinese drawing of geese from the boudoir, and was copying it, with much skill and vividness.
`You are copying the drawing,' she said, standing near the table, and looking down at his work. `Yes. How beautifully you do it! You like it very much, don't you?'
`It's a marvellous drawing,' he said.
`Is it? I'm so glad you like it, because I've always been fond of it. The Chinese Ambassador gave it me.'
`I know,' he said.
`But why do you copy it?' she asked, casual and sing-song. `Why not do something original?'
`I want to know it,' he replied. `One gets more of China, copying this picture, than reading all the books.'
`And what do you get?'
She was at once roused, she laid as it were violent hands on him, to extract his secrets from him. She must know. It was a dreadful tyranny, an obsession in her, to know all he knew. For some time he was silent, hating to answer her. Then, compelled, he began:
`I know what centres they live from -- what they perceive and feel -- the hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux of cold water and mud -- the curious bitter stinging heat of a goose's blood, entering their own blood like an inoculation of corruptive fire -fire of the cold-burning mud -- the lotus mystery.'
Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some insidious occult potency.
`Yes,' she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. `Yes,' and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved. She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse, that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.
Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the diningroom, sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a power, a presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention.
The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian Contessa wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work, Ursula was in yellow with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of grey, crimson and jet, Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk going on, ceaselessly, Joshua's voice dominating; of the ceaseless pitter-patter of women's light laughter and responses; of the brilliant colours and the white table and the shadow above and below; and she seemed in a swoon of gratification, convulsed with pleasure and yet sick, like a revenant. She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard it all, it was all hers.
They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fraulein handed the coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was provided.
`Will you smoke? -- cigarettes or pipe?' asked Fraulein prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth.
The talk was very often political or sociological, and interesting, curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive. Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruthless mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and Birkin and dominated the rest.
But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of Hermione. There was a lull in the talk, as it was arrested by her unconscious but all-powerful will.
`Salsie, won't you play something?' said Hermione, breaking off completely. `Won't somebody dance? Gudrun, you will dance, won't you? I wish you would. Anche tu, Palestra, ballerai? -- si, per piacere. You too, Ursula.'
Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered band that hung by the mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then releasing it suddenly. Like a priestess she looked, unconscious, sunk in a heavy half-trance.
A servant came, and soon reappeared with armfuls of silk robes and shawls and scarves, mostly oriental, things that Hermione, with her love for beautiful extravagant dress, had collected gradually.
`The three women will dance together,' she said.
`What shall it be?' asked Alexander, rising briskly.
`Vergini Delle Rocchette,' said the Contessa at once.
`They are so languid,' said Ursula.
`The three witches from Macbeth,' suggested Fraulein usefully. It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little ballet, in the style of the Russian Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky.
The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, a space was cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, began slowly to dance the death of her husband. Then Ruth came, and they wept together, and lamented, then Naomi came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb show, the women danced their emotion in gesture and motion. The little drama went on for a quarter of an hour.
Ursula was beautiful as Naomi. All her men were dead, it remained to her only to stand alone in indomitable assertion, demanding nothing. Ruth, woman-loving, loved her. Orpah, a vivid, sensational, subtle widow, would go back to the former life, a repetition. The interplay between the women was real and rather frightening. It was strange to see how Gudrun clung with heavy, desperate passion to Ursula, yet smiled with subtle malevolence against her, how Ursula accepted silently, unable to provide any more either for herself or for the other, but dangerous and indomitable, refuting her grief.
Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa's rapid, stoat-like sensationalism, Gudrun's ultimate but treacherous cleaving to the woman in her sister, Ursula's dangerous helplessness, as if she were helplessly weighted, and unreleased.
`That was very beautiful,' everybody cried with one accord. But Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not know. She cried out for more dancing, and it was her will that set the Contessa and Birkin moving mockingly in Malbrouk.
Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to Naomi. The essence of that female, subterranean recklessness and mockery penetrated his blood. He could not forget Gudrun's lifted, offered, cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking weight. And Birkin, watching like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen the brilliant frustration and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was unconsciously drawn to her. She was his future.
Alexander played some Hungarian music, and they all danced, seized by the spirit. Gerald was marvellously exhilarated at finding himself in motion, moving towards Gudrun, dancing with feet that could not yet escape from the waltz and the two-step, but feeling his force stir along his limbs and his body, out of captivity. He did not know yet how to dance their convulsive, rag-time sort of dancing, but he knew how to begin. Birkin, when he could get free from the weight of the people present, whom he disliked, danced rapidly and with a real gaiety. And how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible gaiety.
`Now I see,' cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely gay motion, which he had all to himself. `Mr Birkin, he is a changer.'
Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a foreigner could have seen and have said this.
`Cosa vuol'dire, Palestra?' she asked, sing-song.
`Look,' said the Contessa, in Italian. `He is not a man, he is a chameleon, a creature of change.'
`He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,' said itself over in Hermione's consciousness. And her soul writhed in the black subjugation to him, because of his power to escape, to exist, other than she did, because he was not consistent, not a man, less than a man. She hated him in a despair that shattered her and broke her down, so that she suffered sheer dissolution like a corpse, and was unconscious of everything save the horrible sickness of dissolution that was taking place within her, body and soul.
The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, really the dressing-room, communicating with Birkin's bedroom. When they all took their candles and mounted the stairs, where the lamps were burning subduedly, Hermione captured Ursula and brought her into her own bedroom, to talk to her. A sort of constraint came over Ursula in the big, strange bedroom. Hermione seemed to be bearing down on her, awful and inchoate, making some appeal. They were looking at some Indian silk shirts, gorgeous and sensual in themselves, their shape, their almost corrupt gorgeousness. And Hermione came near, and her bosom writhed, and Ursula was for a moment blank with panic. And for a moment Hermione's haggard eyes saw the fear on the face of the other, there was again a sort of crash, a crashing down. And Ursula picked up a shirt of rich red and blue silk, made for a young princess of fourteen, and was crying mechanically:
`Isn't it wonderful -- who would dare to put those two strong colours together --'
Then Hermione's maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome with dread, escaped, carried away by powerful impulse.
Birkin went straight to bed. He was feeling happy, and sleepy. Since he had danced he was happy. But Gerald would talk to him. Gerald, in evening dress, sat on Birkin's bed when the other lay down, and must talk.
`Who are those two Brangwens?' Gerald asked.
`They live in Beldover.'
`In Beldover! Who are they then?'
`Teachers in the Grammar School.'
There was a pause.
`They are!' exclaimed Gerald at length. `I thought I had seen them before.'
`It disappoints you?' said Birkin.
`Disappoints me! No -- but how is it Hermione has them here?'
`She knew Gudrun in London -- that's the younger one, the one with the darker hair -- she's an artist -- does sculpture and modelling.'
`She's not a teacher in the Grammar School, then -- only the other?'
`Both -- Gudrun art mistress, Ursula a class mistress.'
`And what's the father?'
`Handicraft instructor in the schools.'
`Really!'
`Class-barriers are breaking down!'
Gerald was always uneasy under the slightly jeering tone of the other.
`That their father is handicraft instructor in a school! What does it matter to me?'
Birkin laughed. Gerald looked at his face, as it lay there laughing and bitter and indifferent on the pillow, and he could not go away.
`I don't suppose you will see very much more of Gudrun, at least. She is a restless bird, she'll be gone in a week or two,' said Birkin.
`Where will she go?'
`London, Paris, Rome -- heaven knows. I always expect her to sheer off to Damascus or San Francisco; she's a bird of paradise. God knows what she's got to do with Beldover. It goes by contraries, like dreams.'
Gerald pondered for a few moments.
`How do you know her so well?' he asked.
`I knew her in London,' he replied, `in the Algernon Strange set. She'll know about Pussum and Libidnikov and the rest -- even if she doesn't know them personally. She was never quite that set -- more conventional, in a way. I've known her for two years, I suppose.'
`And she makes money, apart from her teaching?' asked Gerald.
`Some -- irregularly. She can sell her models. She has a certain reclame.'
`How much for?'
`A guinea, ten guineas.'
`And are they good? What are they?'
`I think sometimes they are marvellously good. That is hers, those two wagtails in Hermione's boudoir -- you've seen them -- they are carved in wood and painted.'
`I thought it was savage carving again.'
`No, hers. That's what they are -- animals and birds, sometimes odd small people in everyday dress, really rather wonderful when they come off. They have a sort of funniness that is quite unconscious and subtle.'
`She might be a well-known artist one day?' mused Gerald.
`She might. But I think she won't. She drops her art if anything else catches her. Her contrariness prevents her taking it seriously -- she must never be too serious, she feels she might give herself away. And she won't give herself away -- she's always on the defensive. That's what I can't stand about her type. By the way, how did things go off with Pussum after I left you? I haven't heard anything.'
`Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a real old-fashioned row.'
Birkin was silent.
`Of course,' he said, `Julius is somewhat insane. On the one hand he's had religious mania, and on the other, he is fascinated by obscenity. Either he is a pure servant, washing the feet of Christ, or else he is making obscene drawings of Jesus -- action and reaction -- and between the two, nothing. He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with a baby face, on the one hand, and on the other, he must have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.'
`That's what I can't make out,' said Gerald. `Does he love her, the Pussum, or doesn't he?'
`He neither does nor doesn't. She is the harlot, the actual harlot of adultery to him. And he's got a craving to throw himself into the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on the name of the lily of purity, the baby-faced girl, and so enjoys himself all round. It's the old story -- action and reaction, and nothing between.'
`I don't know,' said Gerald, after a pause, `that he does insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being rather foul.'
`But I thought you liked her,' exclaimed Birkin. `I always felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, personally, that's true.'
`I liked her all right, for a couple of days,' said Gerald. `But a week of her would have turned me over. There's a certain smell about the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond words -- even if you like it at first.'
`I know,' said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, `But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.'
Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, and went to his room. But he returned in a few minutes, in his shirt.
`One thing,' he said, seating himself on the bed again. `We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give her anything.'
`Money?' said Birkin. `She'll get what she wants from Halliday or from one of her acquaintances.'
`But then,' said Gerald, `I'd rather give her her dues and settle the account.'
`She doesn't care.'
`No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, and one would rather it were closed.'
`Would you?' said Birkin. He was looking at the white legs of Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his shirt. They were white-skinned, full, muscular legs, handsome and decided. Yet they moved Birkin with a sort of pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish.
`I think I'd rather close the account,' said Gerald, repeating himself vaguely.
`It doesn't matter one way or another,' said Birkin.
`You always say it doesn't matter,' said Gerald, a little puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man affectionately.
`Neither does it,' said Birkin.
`But she was a decent sort, really --'
`Render unto Caesarina the things that ar
