Women in Love

'I like it very much,' she replied.

He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.

'And you swim?' 'Yes, I swim.' Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel

something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time.

'Why wouldn't you bathe?' he asked her again, later, when he was once

more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

'Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.

He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The

flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she

signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards,

fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one

that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever

they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to

strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of a man and a

human-being.

After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and

Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There had been some discussion,

on the whole quite intellectual and artificial, about a new state, a

new world of man. Supposing this old social state WERE broken and

destroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?

The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the SOCIAL equality of man.

No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was fit for his own

little bit of a task--let him do that, and then please himself. The

unifying principle was the work in hand. Only work, the business of

production, held men together. It was mechanical, but then society WAS

a mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do as they

liked.

'Oh!' cried Gudrun. 'Then we shan't have names any more--we shall be

like the Germans, nothing but Herr Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I

can imagine it--"I am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich--I am Mrs

Member-of-Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen." Very

pretty that.' 'Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen,' said

Gerald.

'What things, Mr Colliery-Manager Crich? The relation between you and

me, PAR EXEMPLE?' 'Yes, for example,' cried the Italian. 'That which is between men and

women--!' 'That is non-social,' said Birkin, sarcastically.

'Exactly,' said Gerald. 'Between me and a woman, the social question

does not enter. It is my own affair.' 'A ten-pound note on it,' said Birkin.

'You don't admit that a woman is a social being?' asked Ursula of

Gerald.