ll come back,' said Gudrun, with a sardonic smile.

'Tant pis pour moi,' he replied.

'Isn't he angry with his mother country!' laughed Gerald, amused.

'Ah, a patriot!' said Gudrun, with something like a sneer.

Birkin refused to answer any more.

Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. Then she turned away. It
was finished, her spell of divination in him. She felt already purely
cynical. She looked at Gerald. He was wonderful like a piece of radium
to her. She felt she could consume herself and know ALL, by means of
this fatal, living metal. She smiled to herself at her fancy. And what
would she do with herself, when she had destroyed herself? For if
spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is indestructible.

He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the moment. She
stretched out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of green tulle, and
touched his chin with her subtle, artist's fingers.

'What are they then?' she asked, with a strange, knowing smile.

'What?' he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating with wonder.

'Your thoughts.'

Gerald looked like a man coming awake.

'I think I had none,' he said.

'Really!' she said, with grave laughter in her voice.

And to Birkin it was as if she killed Gerald, with that touch.

'Ah but,' cried Gudrun, 'let us drink to Britannia--let us drink to
Britannia.'

It seemed there was wild despair in her voice. Gerald laughed, and
filled the glasses.

'I think Rupert means,' he said, 'that NATIONALLY all Englishmen must
die, so that they can exist individually and--'

'Super-nationally--' put in Gudrun, with a slight ironic grimace,
raising her glass.

The next day, they descended at the tiny railway station of
Hohenhausen, at the end of the tiny valley railway. It was snow
everywhere, a white, perfect cradle of snow, new and frozen, sweeping
up an either side, black crags, and white sweeps of silver towards the
blue pale heavens.

As they stepped out on the naked platform, with only snow around and
above, Gudrun shrank as if it chilled her heart.

'My God, Jerry,' she said, turning to Gerald with sudden intimacy,
'you've done it now.'

'What?'

She made a faint gesture, indicating the world on either hand.

'Look at it!'

She seemed afraid to go on. He laughed.

They were in the heart of the mountains. From high above, on either
side, swept down the white fold of snow, so that one seemed small and
tiny in a valley of pure concrete hea