'
Birkin pondered as if he would crack something.
'I know,' he said, 'it just doesn't centre. The old ideals are dead as
nails--nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect
union with a woman--sort of ultimate marriage--and there isn't anything
else.'
'And you mean if there isn't the woman, there's nothing?' said Gerald.
'Pretty well that--seeing there's no God.'
'Then we're hard put to it,' said Gerald. And he turned to look out of
the window at the flying, golden landscape.
Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his face was,
with a certain courage to be indifferent.
'You think its heavy odds against us?' said Birkin.
'If we've got to make our life up out of a woman, one woman, woman
only, yes, I do,' said Gerald. 'I don't believe I shall ever make up MY
life, at that rate.'
Birkin watched him almost angrily.
'You are a born unbeliever,' he said.
'I only feel what I feel,' said Gerald. And he looked again at Birkin
almost sardonically, with his blue, manly, sharp-lighted eyes.
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