cadilloes.'

'And I don't care whether you are or not--I am.'

The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and brought the
water, and had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sitting up in bed, looked
lazily and pleasantly out on the park, that was so green and deserted,
romantic, belonging to the past. He was thinking how lovely, how sure,
how formed, how final all the things of the past were--the lovely
accomplished past--this house, so still and golden, the park slumbering
its centuries of peace. And then, what a snare and a delusion, this
beauty of static things--what a horrible, dead prison Breadalby really
was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! Yet it was better than
the sordid scrambling conflict of the present. If only one might create
the future after one's own heart--for a little pure truth, a little
unflinching application of simple truth to life, the heart cried out
ceaselessly.

'I can't see what you will leave me at all, to be interested in,' came
Gerald's voice from the lower room. 'Neither the Pussums, nor the
mines, nor anything else.'

'You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I'm not interested
myself,' said Birkin.

'What am I to do at all, then?' came Gerald's voice.

'What you like. What am I to do myself?'

In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact.

'I'm blest if I know,' came the good-humoured answer.

'You see,' said Birkin, 'part of you wants the Pussum, and nothing but
the Pussum, part of you wants the mines, the business, and nothing but
the business--and there you are--all in bits--'

'And part of me wants something else,' said Gerald, in a queer, quiet,
real voice.

'What?' said Birkin, rather surprised.

'That's what I hoped you could tell me,' said Gerald.

There was a silence for some time.

'I can't tell you--I can't find my own way, let alone yours. You might
marry,' Birkin replied.

'Who--the Pussum?' asked Gerald.

'Perhaps,' said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window.

'That is your panacea,' said Gerald. 'But you haven't even tried it on
yourself yet, and you are sick enough.'

'I am,' said Birkin. 'Still, I shall come right.'

'Through marriage?'

'Yes,' Birkin answered obstinately.

'And no,' added Gerald. 'No, no, no, my boy.'

There was a silence between them, and a strange tension of hostility.
They always kept a gap, a distance between them, they wanted always to
be free each of the other. Yet there was a curious