'Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?' Birkin
asked, with direct, attentive seriousness.
'Of my own life?' said Gerald.
'Yes.'
There was a really puzzled pause.
'I can't say,' said Gerald. 'It hasn't been, so far.'
'What has your life been, so far?'
'Oh--finding out things for myself--and getting experiences--and making
things GO.'
Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel.
'I find,' he said, 'that one needs some one REALLY pure single
activity--I should call love a single pure activity. But I DON'T really
love anybody--not now.'
'Have you ever really loved anybody?' asked Gerald.
'Yes and no,' replied Birkin.
'Not finally?' said Gerald.
'Finally--finally--no,' said Birkin.
'Nor I,' said Gerald.
'And do you want to?' said Birkin.
Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look into the
eyes of the other man.
'I don't know,' he said.
'I do--I want to love,' said Birkin.
'You do?'
'Yes. I want the finality of love.'
'The finality of love,' repeated Gerald. And he waited for a moment.
'Just one woman?' he added. The evening light, flooding yellow along
the fields, lit up Birkin's face with a tense, abstract steadfastness.
Gerald still could not make it out.
'Yes, one woman,' said Birkin.
But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than confident.
'I don't believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will ever make my
life,' said Gerald.
'Not the centre and core of it--the love between you and a woman?'
asked Birkin.
Gerald's eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he watched the
other man.
'I never quite feel it that way,' he said.
'You don't? Then wherein does life centre, for you?'
'I don't know--that's what I want somebody to tell me. As far as I can
make out, it doesn't centre at all. It is artificially held TOGETHER by
the social mechanism.'
Birkin pondered as if he would crack something.
'I know,' he said, 'it just doesn't centre. The old ideals are dead as
nails--nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect
union with a woman--sort of ultimate marriage--and there isn't anything
else.'
'And you mean if there isn't the woman, there's nothing?' said Gerald.
'Pretty well that--seeing there's no God.'
'Then we're hard put to it,' said Gerald. And he turned to look out of
the window at the flying, golden landscape.
Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his face was,
with a certain courage to be indifferent.
'You think its heavy odds against us?' said Birkin.
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