Women in Love

'Shall we swear to each other, one day?' said Birkin, putting out his

hand towards Gerald.

Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and

afraid.

'We'll leave it till I understand it better,' he said, in a voice of

excuse.

Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of

contempt came into his heart.

'Yes,' he said. 'You must tell me what you think, later. You know what

I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves one

free.' They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all the

time. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which he

usually saw in Gerald, and which usually he liked so much, but the man

himself, complete, and as if fated, doomed, limited. This strange sense

of fatality in Gerald, as if he were limited to one form of existence,

one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himself

seemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments of

passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, or

boredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so bored Birkin

in Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from himself, in real

indifferent gaiety. He had a clog, a sort of monomania.

There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone,

letting the stress of the contact pass: 'Can't you get a good governess for Winifred?--somebody exceptional?' 'Hermione Roddice suggested we should ask Gudrun to teach her to draw

and to model in clay. You know Winnie is astonishingly clever with that

plasticine stuff. Hermione declares she is an artist.' Gerald spoke in

the usual animated, chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed.

But Birkin's manner was full of reminder.

'Really! I didn't know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun WOULD teach her,

it would be perfect--couldn't be anything better--if Winifred is an

artist. Because Gudrun somewhere is one. And every true artist is the

salvation of every other.' 'I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.' 'Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit

to live in. If you can arrange THAT for Winifred, it is perfect.' 'But you think she wouldn't come?' 'I don't know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She won't go cheap

anywhere. Or if she does, she'll pretty soon take herself back. So

whether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here,

in Beldover, I don't know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred has

got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means of

being self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She'll never

get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself,

and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think

what her life will be like unless she does find a means of expression,

some way of fulfilment. You can see what mere leaving it to fate

brings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to--look at your

own mother.' 'Do you think mother is abnormal?' 'No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common

run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.' 'After producing a brood of wrong children,' said Gerald gloomily.