You can see what mere leaving it to fate
brings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to--look at your
own mother.'
'Do you think mother is abnormal?'
'No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common
run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.'
'After producing a brood of wrong children,' said Gerald gloomily.
'No more wrong than any of the rest of us,' Birkin replied. 'The most
normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one by
one.'
'Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,' said Gerald with sudden
impotent anger.
'Well,' said Birkin, 'why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to be
alive--at other times it is anything but a curse. You've got plenty of
zest in it really.'
'Less than you'd think,' said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in
his look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
'I don't see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the
Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,' said Gerald.
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