was now tired and dispirited, said to him:
'I always feel doomed when the train is running into London. I feel
such a despair, so hopeless, as if it were the end of the world.'
'Really!' said Gerald. 'And does the end of the world frighten you?'
Birkin lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug.
'I don't know,' he said. 'It does while it hangs imminent and doesn't
fall. But people give me a bad feeling--very bad.'
There was a roused glad smile in Gerald's eyes.
'Do they?' he said. And he watched the other man critically.
In a few minutes the train was running through the disgrace of
outspread London. Everybody in the carriage was on the alert, waiting
to escape. At last they were under the huge arch of the station, in the
tremendous shadow of the town. Birkin shut himself together--he was in
now.
The two men went together in a taxi-cab.
'Don't you feel like one of the damned?' asked Birkin, as they sat in a
little, swiftly-running enclosure, and watched the hideous great
street.
'No,' laughed Gerald.
'It is real death,' said Birkin.
CHAPTER VI.
CREME DE MENTHE
They met again in the cafe several hours later. Gerald went through the
push doors into the large, lofty room where the faces and heads of the
drinkers showed dimly through the haze of smoke, reflected more dimly,
and repeated ad infinitum in the great mirrors on the walls, so that
one seemed to enter a vague, dim world of shadowy drinkers humming
within an atmosphere of blue tobacco smoke. There was, however, the red
plush of the seats to give substance within the bubble of pleasure.
Gerald moved in his slow, observant, glistening-attentive motion down
between the tables and the people whose shadowy faces looked up as he
passed. He seemed to be entering in some strange element, passing into
an illuminated new region, among a host of licentious souls. He was
pleased, and entertained. He looked over all the dim, evanescent,
strangely illuminated faces that bent across the tables. Then he saw
Birkin rise and signal to him.
At Birkin's table was a girl with dark, soft, fluffy hair cut short in
the artist fashion, hanging level and full almost like the Egyptian
princess's. She was small and delicately made, with warm colouring and
large, dark hostile eyes. There was a delicacy, almost a beauty in all
her form, and at the same time a certain attractive grossness of
spirit, that made a little spark leap instantly alight in Gerald's
eyes.
Birkin, who looked muted, unreal, his presence left out, introduced her
as Miss Darrington. She gave her hand with a sudden, unwilling
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