ong the naked rocks. Round about, spiked,
slashed snow-peaks pricked the heaven.

Gerald might have found this rope. He might have hauled himself up to
the crest. He might have heard the dogs in the Marienhutte, and found
shelter. He might have gone on, down the steep, steep fall of the
south-side, down into the dark valley with its pines, on to the great
Imperial road leading south to Italy.

He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The south? Italy? What
then? Was it a way out? It was only a way in again. Birkin stood high
in the painful air, looking at the peaks, and the way south. Was it any
good going south, to Italy? Down the old, old Imperial road?

He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease to care. Best
cease to care. Whatever the mystery which has brought forth man and the
universe, it is a non-human mystery, it has its own great ends, man is
not the criterion. Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non-human
mystery. Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.

'God cannot do without man.' It was a saying of some great French
religious teacher. But surely this is false. God can do without man.
God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters
failed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed
with them. In the same way the mystery could dispense with man, should
he too fail creatively to change and develop. The eternal creative
mystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a finer created
being. Just as the horse has taken the place of the mastodon.

It was very consoling to Birkin, to think this. If humanity ran into a
CUL DE SAC and expended itself, the timeless creative mystery would
bring forth some other being, finer, more wonderful, some new, more
lovely race, to carry on the embodiment of creation. The game was never
up. The mystery of creation was fathomless, infallible, inexhaustible,
forever. Races came and went, species passed away, but ever new species
arose, more lovely, or equally lovely, always surpassing wonder. The
fountain-head was incorruptible and unsearchable. It had no limits. It
could bring forth miracles, create utter new races and new species, in
its own hour, new forms of consciousness, new forms of body, new units
of being. To be man was as nothing compared to the possibilities of the
creative mystery. To have one's pulse beating direct from the mystery,
this was perfection, unutterable satisfaction. Human o