white and indefinite, not to be
assigned, as he looked closely at the carven woman. Strangely elated,
Gerald also lifted his eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his
heart contracted.

He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching face of the
negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in utter physical stress. It
was a terrible face, void, peaked, abstracted almost into
meaninglessness by the weight of sensation beneath. He saw the Pussum
in it. As in a dream, he knew her.

'Why is it art?' Gerald asked, shocked, resentful.

'It conveys a complete truth,' said Birkin. 'It contains the whole
truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.'

'But you can't call it HIGH art,' said Gerald.

'High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of development in
a straight line, behind that carving; it is an awful pitch of culture,
of a definite sort.'

'What culture?' Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the sheer African
thing.

'Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical consciousness,
really ultimate PHYSICAL consciousness, mindless, utterly sensual. It
is so sensual as to be final, supreme.'

But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illusions, certain
ideas like clothing.

'You like the wrong things, Rupert,' he said, 'things against
yourself.'

'Oh, I know, this isn't everything,' Birkin replied, moving away.

When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he also carried his
clothes. He was so conventional at home, that when he was really away,
and on the loose, as now, he enjoyed nothing so much as full
outrageousness. So he strode with his blue silk wrap over his arm and
felt defiant.

The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark eyes like black,
unhappy pools. He could only see the black, bottomless pools of her
eyes. Perhaps she suffered. The sensation of her inchoate suffering
roused the old sharp flame in him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of
cruelty.

'You are awake now,' he said to her.

'What time is it?' came her muted voice.

She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his approach, to sink
helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look of a violated slave, whose
fulfilment lies in her further and further violation, made his nerves
quiver with acutely desirable sensation. After all, his was the only
will, she was the passive substance of his will. He tingled with the
subtle, biting sensation. And then he knew, he must go away from