Women in Love

'Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! But do

listen to this. "And in the great retrogression, the reducing back of

the created body of life, we get knowledge, and beyond knowledge, the

phosphorescent ecstasy of acute sensation." Oh, I do think these

phrases are too absurdly wonderful. Oh but don't you think they

ARE--they're nearly as good as Jesus. "And if, Julius, you want this

ecstasy of reduction with the Pussum, you must go on till it is

fulfilled. But surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living

desire for positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all

this process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is

transcended, and more or less finished--" I do wonder what the flowers

of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.' 'Thank you--and what are you?' 'Oh, I'm another, surely, according to this letter! We're all flowers

of mud--FLEURS--HIC! DU MAL! It's perfectly wonderful, Birkin harrowing

Hell--harrowing the Pompadour--HIC!' 'Go on--go on,' said Maxim. 'What comes next? It's really very

interesting.' 'I think it's awful cheek to write like that,' said the Pussum.

'Yes--yes, so do I,' said the Russian. 'He is a megalomaniac, of

course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of

man--go on reading.' 'Surely,' Halliday intoned, '"surely goodness and mercy hath followed

me all the days of my life--"' he broke off and giggled. Then he began

again, intoning like a clergyman. '"Surely there will come an end in

us to this desire--for the constant going apart,--this passion for

putting asunder--everything--ourselves, reducing ourselves part from

part--reacting in intimacy only for destruction,--using sex as a great

reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from

their highly complex unity--reducing the old ideas, going back to the

savages for our sensations,--always seeking to LOSE ourselves in some

ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite--burning only with

destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out

utterly--"' 'I want to go,' said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the waiter. Her

eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of

Birkin's letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and

resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if

she were mad.

She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to

Halliday's table. They all glanced up at her.

'Excuse me,' she said. 'Is that a genuine letter you are reading?' 'Oh yes,' said Halliday. 'Quite genuine.' 'May I see?' Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised.