'
Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
'You think there is no hope?' she asked, in her pertinent fashion.
But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question.
'Any hope of England's becoming real? God knows. It's a great actual
unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if
there were no Englishmen.'
'You think the English will have to disappear?' persisted Gudrun. It
was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her
own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on
Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as
out of some instrument of divination.
He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered:
'Well--what else is in front of them, but disappearance? They've got to
disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, anyhow.'
Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide and fixed
on him.
'But in what way do you mean, disappear?--' she persisted.
'Yes, do you mean a change of heart?' put in Gerald.
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