Women in Love

'No,' he said. 'We've been--you can imagine how it's been, since the

accident.' 'Yes. Is it calming down?' 'I don't know. It's a shock, of course. But I don't believe mother

minds. I really don't believe she takes any notice. And what's so

funny, she used to be all for the children--nothing mattered, nothing

whatever mattered but the children. And now, she doesn't take any more

notice than if it was one of the servants.' 'No? Did it upset YOU very much?' 'It's a shock. But I don't feel it very much, really. I don't feel any

different. We've all got to die, and it doesn't seem to make any great

difference, anyhow, whether you die or not. I can't feel any GRIEF you

know. It leaves me cold. I can't quite account for it.' 'You don't care if you die or not?' asked Birkin.

Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred steel of a

weapon. He felt awkward, but indifferent. As a matter of fact, he did

care terribly, with a great fear.

'Oh,' he said, 'I don't want to die, why should I? But I never trouble.

The question doesn't seem to be on the carpet for me at all. It doesn't

interest me, you know.' 'TIMOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME,' quoted Birkin, adding--'No, death doesn't

really seem the point any more. It curiously doesn't concern one. It's

like an ordinary tomorrow.' Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two men met, and

an unspoken understanding was exchanged.

Gerald narrowed his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous as he

looked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended in a point in

space, strangely keen-eyed and yet blind.

'If death isn't the point,' he said, in a strangely abstract, cold,

fine voice--'what is?' He sounded as if he had been found out.

'What is?' re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence.

'There's long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, before we

disappear,' said Birkin.

'There is,' said Gerald. 'But what sort of way?' He seemed to press the

other man for knowledge which he himself knew far better than Birkin

did.

'Right down the slopes of degeneration--mystic, universal degeneration.

There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: agelong. We

live on long after our death, and progressively, in progressive

devolution.' Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, as

if, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: as

if his own knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin's was a

matter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on the

head:--though aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to give

himself away. If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would

never help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end.