sinister knowledge,
devoid of illusions and hopes.

To Gudrun, there was in Loerke the rock-bottom of all life. Everybody
else had their illusion, must have their illusion, their before and
after. But he, with a perfect stoicism, did without any before and
after, dispensed with all illusion. He did not deceive himself in the
last issue. In the last issue he cared about nothing, he was troubled
about nothing, he made not the slightest attempt to be at one with
anything. He existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical and
momentaneous. There was only his work.

It was curious too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier
life, attracted her. There was something insipid and tasteless to her,
in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through
school and university. A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in
her for this mud-child. He seemed to be the very stuff of the
underworld of life. There was no going beyond him.

Ursula too was attracted by Loerke. In both sisters he commanded a
certain homage. But there were moments when to Ursula he seemed
indescribably inferior, false, a vulgarism.

Both Birkin and Gerald disliked him, Gerald ignoring him with some
contempt, Birkin exasperated.

'What do the women find so impressive in that little brat?' Gerald
asked.

'God alone knows,' replied Birkin, 'unless it's some sort of appeal he
makes to them, which flatters them and has such a power over them.'

Gerald looked up in surprise.

'DOES he make an appeal to them?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' replied Birkin. 'He is the perfectly subjected being,
existing almost like a criminal. And the women rush towards that, like
a current of air towards a vacuum.'

'Funny they should rush to that,' said Gerald.

'Makes one mad, too,' said Birkin. 'But he has the fascination of pity
and repulsion for them, a little obscene monster of the darkness that
he is.'

Gerald stood still, suspended in thought.

'What DO women want, at the bottom?' he asked.

Birkin shrugged his shoulders.

'God knows,' he said. 'Some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems
to me. They seem to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness, and
will never be satisfied till they've come to the end.'

Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by.
Everywhere was blind today, horribly blind.

'And what is the end?' he asked.

Birkin shook his head.

'I've not got there yet, so I don't know. Ask Loerke, he'