her's blood into the
cut?' said Gerald.

'Yes--and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all their
lives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, that is obsolete. But we
ought to swear to love each other, you and I, implicitly, and
perfectly, finally, without any possibility of going back on it.'

He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. Gerald looked
down at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in fascinated attraction,
that he was mistrustful, resenting the bondage, hating the attraction.

'We will swear to each other, one day, shall we?' pleaded Birkin. 'We
will swear to stand by each other--be true to each
other--ultimately--infallibly--given to each other, organically--without
possibility of taking back.'

Birkin sought hard to express himself. But Gerald hardly listened. His
face shone with a certain luminous pleasure. He was pleased. But he
kept his reserve. He held himself back.

'Shall we swear to each other, one day?' said Birkin, putting out his
hand towards Gerald.

Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and
afraid.

'We'll leave it till I understand it better,' he said, in a voice of
excuse.

Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of
contempt came into his heart.

'Yes,' he said. 'You must tell me what you think, later. You know what
I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves one
free.'

They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all the
time. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which he
usually saw in Gerald, and which usually he liked so much, but the man
himself, complete, and as if fated, doomed, limited. This strange sense
of fatality in Gerald, as if he were limited to one form of existence,
one knowledge, one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himself
seemed wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments of
passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, or
boredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so bored Birkin
in Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from himself, in real
indifferent gaiety. He had a clog, a sort of monomania.

There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter tone,
letting the stress of the contact pass:

'Can't you get a good governess for Winifred?--somebody exceptional?'

'Hermione Roddice suggested we should ask Gudrun to teach her to draw
and to model in clay. You know Winn