Page:Women in Love, Lawrence, 1920.djvu/542

534 Birkin went home again to Gerald. He went into the room, and sat down on the bed. Dead, dead and cold!

There was no response from that which had been Gerald. Strange, congealed, icy substance — no more. No more!

Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day's business. He did it all quietly, without bother. To rant, to rave, to be tragic, to make situations — it was all too late. Best be quiet, and bear one's soul in patience and in fulness.

But when he went in again, at evening, taking look at Gerald between the candles, because of his heart's hunger, suddenly his heart contracted, his own candle all but fell from his hand, as, with a strange whimpering cry, the tears broke out. He sat down in a chair, shaken by a sudden access. Ursula who had followed him, recoiled aghast from him, as he sat with sunken head and body convulsively shaken, making a strange, horrible sound of tears.

"I didn't want it to be like this — I didn't want it to be like this," he cried to himself. Ursula could not but think of the Kaiser's: "Ich habe as nicht gewollt." She looked almost with horror on Birkin.

Suddenly he was silent. But he sat with his head dropped, to hide his face. Then furtively he wiped his face with his fingers. Then suddenly he lifted his head, and looked straight at Ursula, with dark almost vengeful eyes.

"He should have loved me," he said. "I offered him."

She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:

"What difference would it have made!"

"It would!" he said. "It would."

He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald. With head oddly lifted, like a man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, mute, material face. It had a bluish cast. It sent a shaft like ice through the heart of the living man. Cold, mute, material! Birkin remembered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, with a warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one second — then let go again, let go forever. If he had kept true to that