ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG19200"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG192003251"ᐳThere were long spaces of silence between their words. The wrestling had some deep meaning to them—an unfinished meaning.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003252"ᐳ“We are mentally, spiritually intimate, therefore we should be more or less physically intimate too—it is more whole.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003253"ᐳ“Certainly it is,” said Gerald. Then he laughed pleasantly, adding: “It’s rather wonderful to me.” He stretched out his arms handsomely.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003254"ᐳ“Yes,” said Birkin. “I don’t know why one should have to justify oneself.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003255"ᐳ“No.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003256"ᐳThe two men began to dress.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003257"ᐳ“I think also that you are beautiful,” said Birkin to Gerald, “and that is enjoyable too. One should enjoy what is given.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003258"ᐳ“You think I am beautiful—how do you mean, physically?” asked Gerald, his eyes glistening.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003259"ᐳ“Yes. You have a northern kind of beauty, like light refracted from snow—and a beautiful, plastic form. Yes, that is there to enjoy as well. We should enjoy everything.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003260"ᐳGerald laughed in his throat, and said:ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003261"ᐳ“That’s certainly one way of looking at it. I can say this much, I feel better. It has certainly helped me. Is this the Bruderschaft you wanted?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003262"ᐳ“Perhaps. Do you think this pledges anything?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003263"ᐳ“I don’t know,” laughed Gerald.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003264"ᐳ“At any rate, one feels freer and more open now—and that is what we want.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003265"ᐳ“Certainly,” said Gerald.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003266"ᐳThey drew to the fire, with the decanters and the glasses and the food.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003267"ᐳ“I always eat a little before I go to bed,” said Gerald. “I sleep better.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003268"ᐳ“I should not sleep so well,” said Birkin.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003269"ᐳ“No? There you are, we are not alike. I’ll put a dressing-gown on.” Birkin remained alone, looking at the fire. His mind had reverted to Ursula. She seemed to return again into his consciousness. Gerald came down wearing a gown of broad-barred, thick black-and-green silk, brilliant and striking.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003270"ᐳ“You are very fine,” said Birkin, looking at the full robe.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003271"ᐳ“It was a caftan in Bokhara,” said Gerald. “I like it.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003272"ᐳ“I like it too.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003273"ᐳBirkin was silent, thinking how scrupulous Gerald was in his attire, how expensive too. He wore silk socks, and studs of fine workmanship, and silk underclothing, and silk braces. Curious! This was another of the differences between them. Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own appearance.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003274"ᐳ“Of course you,” said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; “there’s something curious about you. You’re curiously strong. One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192003275"ᐳBirkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of the other man, blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was half thinking of the difference between it and himself—so different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from woman, yet in another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman who was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this moment. Gerald was becoming dim again, lapsing out of him.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG192001486"ᐳThere was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic. Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of everything but their own immersion.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001487"ᐳ“But even if everybody is wrong—where are you right?” she cried, “where are you any better?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001488"ᐳ“I?—I’m not right,” he cried back. “At least my only rightness lies in the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest—and see what they are doing all the time. By their works ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who daren’t stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001489"ᐳ“But,” said Ursula sadly, “that doesn’t alter the fact that love is the greatest, does it? What they do doesn’t alter the truth of what they say, does it?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001490"ᐳ“Completely, because if what they say were true, then they couldn’t help fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok at last. It’s a lie to say that love is the greatest. You might as well say that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everything balances. What people want is hate—hate and nothing but hate. And in the name of righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselves with nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. It’s the lie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it—death, murder, torture, violent destruction—let us have it: but not in the name of love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, and there would be no absolute loss, if every human being perished tomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. The real tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop of Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people, an infinite weight of mortal lies.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19200357"ᐳ“And now you will always see them,” he said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200358"ᐳ“Now I shall always see them,” she repeated. “Thank you so much for showing me. I think they’re so beautiful—little red flames—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200359"ᐳHer absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin and Ursula were suspended. The little red pistillate flowers had some strange, almost mystic-passionate attraction for her.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200360"ᐳThe lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last the class was dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, with her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table, her long white face pushed up, not attending to anything. Birkin had gone to the window, and was looking from the brilliantly-lighted room on to the grey, colourless outside, where rain was noiselessly falling. Ursula put away her things in the cupboard.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200361"ᐳAt length Hermione rose and came near to her.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200362"ᐳ“Your sister has come home?” she said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200363"ᐳ“Yes,” said Ursula.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200364"ᐳ“And does she like being back in Beldover?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200365"ᐳ“No,” said Ursula.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200366"ᐳ“No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won’t you come and see me? Won’t you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few days?—do—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200367"ᐳ“Thank you very much,” said Ursula.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200368"ᐳ“Then I will write to you,” said Hermione. “You think your sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and painted—perhaps you have seen it?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200369"ᐳ“No,” said Ursula.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200370"ᐳ“I think it is perfectly wonderful—like a flash of instinct.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200371"ᐳ“Her little carvings are strange,” said Ursula.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200372"ᐳ“Perfectly beautiful—full of primitive passion—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200373"ᐳ“Isn’t it queer that she always likes little things?—she must always work small things, that one can put between one’s hands, birds and tiny animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses, and see the world that way—why is it, do you think?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200374"ᐳHermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached scrutinising gaze that excited the younger woman.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200375"ᐳ“Yes,” said Hermione at length. “It is curious. The little things seem to be more subtle to her—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200376"ᐳ“But they aren’t, are they? A mouse isn’t any more subtle than a lion, is it?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19200377"ᐳAgain Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long scrutiny, as if she were following some train of thought of her own, and barely attending to the other’s speech.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG192004586"ᐳ“Can one?” cried Ursula in surprise.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004587"ᐳHe looked up at her with a communicative smile.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004588"ᐳ“Oh yes, plainly.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004589"ᐳShe was pleased. She meditated a moment.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004590"ᐳ“And can you see that Rupert is happy as well?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004591"ᐳHe lowered his eyelids, and looked aside.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004592"ᐳ“Oh yes,” he said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004593"ᐳ“Really!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004594"ᐳ“Oh yes.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004595"ᐳHe was very quiet, as if it were something not to be talked about by him. He seemed sad.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004596"ᐳShe was very sensitive to suggestion. She asked the question he wanted her to ask.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004597"ᐳ“Why don’t you be happy as well?” she said. “You could be just the same.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004598"ᐳHe paused a moment.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004599"ᐳ“With Gudrun?” he asked.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004600"ᐳ“Yes!” she cried, her eyes glowing. But there was a strange tension, an emphasis, as if they were asserting their wishes, against the truth.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004601"ᐳ“You think Gudrun would have me, and we should be happy?” he said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004602"ᐳ“Yes, I’m sure!” she cried.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004603"ᐳHer eyes were round with delight. Yet underneath she was constrained, she knew her own insistence.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004604"ᐳ“Oh, I’m so glad,” she added.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004605"ᐳHe smiled.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004606"ᐳ“What makes you glad?” he said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004607"ᐳ“For her sake,” she replied. “I’m sure you’d—you’re the right man for her.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004608"ᐳ“You are?” he said. “And do you think she would agree with you?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004609"ᐳ“Oh yes!” she exclaimed hastily. Then, upon reconsideration, very uneasy: “Though Gudrun isn’t so very simple, is she? One doesn’t know her in five minutes, does one? She’s not like me in that.” She laughed at him with her strange, open, dazzled face.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004610"ᐳ“You think she’s not much like you?” Gerald asked.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004611"ᐳShe knitted her brows.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004612"ᐳ“Oh, in many ways she is. But I never know what she will do when anything new comes.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004613"ᐳ“You don’t?” said Gerald. He was silent for some moments. Then he moved tentatively. “I was going to ask her, in any case, to go away with me at Christmas,” he said, in a very small, cautious voice.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004614"ᐳ“Go away with you? For a time, you mean?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004615"ᐳ“As long as she likes,” he said, with a deprecating movement.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004616"ᐳThey were both silent for some minutes.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004617"ᐳ“Of course,” said Ursula at last, “she might just be willing to rush into marriage. You can see.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004618"ᐳ“Yes,” smiled Gerald. “I can see. But in case she won’t—do you think she would go abroad with me for a few days—or for a fortnight?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004619"ᐳ“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “I’d ask her.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192004620"ᐳ“Do you think we might all go together?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG192001198"ᐳ“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.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001199"ᐳ“You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I’m not interested myself,” said Birkin.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001200"ᐳ“What am I to do at all, then?” came Gerald’s voice.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001201"ᐳ“What you like. What am I to do myself?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001202"ᐳIn the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001203"ᐳ“I’m blest if I know,” came the good-humoured answer.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001204"ᐳ“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—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001205"ᐳ“And part of me wants something else,” said Gerald, in a queer, quiet, real voice.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001206"ᐳ“What?” said Birkin, rather surprised.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001207"ᐳ“That’s what I hoped you could tell me,” said Gerald.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001208"ᐳThere was a silence for some time.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001209"ᐳ“I can’t tell you—I can’t find my own way, let alone yours. You might marry,” Birkin replied.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001210"ᐳ“Who—the Pussum?” asked Gerald.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001211"ᐳ“Perhaps,” said Birkin. And he rose and went to the window.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001212"ᐳ“That is your panacea,” said Gerald. “But you haven’t even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001213"ᐳ“I am,” said Birkin. “Still, I shall come right.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001214"ᐳ“Through marriage?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001215"ᐳ“Yes,” Birkin answered obstinately.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001216"ᐳ“And no,” added Gerald. “No, no, no, my boy.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001217"ᐳThere 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 heart-straining towards each other.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001218"ᐳ“Salvator femininus,” said Gerald, satirically.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001219"ᐳ“Why not?” said Birkin.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001220"ᐳ“No reason at all,” said Gerald, “if it really works. But whom will you marry?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001221"ᐳ“A woman,” said Birkin.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001222"ᐳ“Good,” said Gerald.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001223"ᐳBirkin and Gerald were the last to come down to breakfast. Hermione liked everybody to be early. She suffered when she felt her day was diminished, she felt she had missed her life. She seemed to grip the hours by the throat, to force her life from them. She was rather pale and ghastly, as if left behind, in the morning. Yet she had her power, her will was strangely pervasive. With the entrance of the two young men a sudden tension was felt.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001224"ᐳShe lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song:ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG192001225"ᐳ“Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ