Women in Love

Of the last series of subtleties, Gerald was not capable. He could not

touch the quick of her. But where his ruder blows could not penetrate,

the fine, insinuating blade of Loerke's insect-like comprehension

could. At least, it was time for her now to pass over to the other, the

creature, the final craftsman. She knew that Loerke, in his innermost

soul, was detached from everything, for him there was neither heaven

nor earth nor hell. He admitted no allegiance, he gave no adherence

anywhere. He was single and, by abstraction from the rest, absolute in

himself.

Whereas in Gerald's soul there still lingered some attachment to the

rest, to the whole. And this was his limitation. He was limited, BORNE,

subject to his necessity, in the last issue, for goodness, for

righteousness, for oneness with the ultimate purpose. That the ultimate

purpose might be the perfect and subtle experience of the process of

death, the will being kept unimpaired, that was not allowed in him. And

this was his limitation.

There was a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had denied her

marriage with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover like a creature on the

wing, waiting to settle. He did not approach Gudrun violently, he was

never ill-timed. But carried on by a sure instinct in the complete

darkness of his soul, he corresponded mystically with her,

imperceptibly, but palpably.

For two days, he talked to her, continued the discussions of art, of

life, in which they both found such pleasure. They praised the by-gone

things, they took a sentimental, childish delight in the achieved

perfections of the past. Particularly they liked the late eighteenth

century, the period of Goethe and of Shelley, and Mozart.

They played with the past, and with the great figures of the past, a

sort of little game of chess, or marionettes, all to please themselves.

They had all the great men for their marionettes, and they two were the

God of the show, working it all. As for the future, that they never

mentioned except one laughed out some mocking dream of the destruction

of the world by a ridiculous catastrophe of man's invention: a man

invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the earth in two, and

the two halves set off in different directions through space, to the

dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of the world divided into

two halves, and each half decided IT was perfect and right, the other

half was wrong and must be destroyed; so another end of the world. Or

else, Loerke's dream of fear, the world went cold, and snow fell

everywhere, and only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men

like awful white snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty.