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After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione and Gerald and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.
'She is both,' said Gerald. 'She is a social being, as far as society
is concerned. But for her own private self, she is a free agent, it is
her own affair, what she does.'
'But won't it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?' asked
Ursula.
'Oh no,' replied Gerald. 'They arrange themselves naturally--we see it
now, everywhere.'
'Don't you laugh so pleasantly till you're out of the wood,' said
Birkin.
Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation.
'Was I laughing?' he said.
'IF,' said Hermione at last, 'we could only realise, that in the SPIRIT
we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there--the rest
wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and
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