Women in Love

'How does that follow?' asked Gerald crossly.

'No man,' said Birkin, 'cuts another man's throat unless he wants to

cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete

truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee.

And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable

is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.' 'Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,' said Gerald to Birkin. 'As a matter

of fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and most other people would

like to cut it for us--some time or other--' 'It's a nasty view of things, Gerald,' said Birkin, 'and no wonder you

are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.' 'How am I afraid of myself?' said Gerald; 'and I don't think I am

unhappy.' 'You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and

imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,' Birkin said.

'How do you make that out?' said Gerald.

'From you,' said Birkin.

There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very

near to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk

brought them into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous

intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. They parted with

apparent unconcern, as if their going apart were a trivial occurrence.

And they really kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the

heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other,

inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their

relationship a casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to

be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them.

They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and

men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful

but suppressed friendliness.