r inhuman
mattered nothing. The perfect pulse throbbed with indescribable being,
miraculous unborn species.

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

Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay
Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.

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 fullness.

But when he went in again, at evening, to 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 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 for ever. If he had kept true to that clasp, death would
not have mattered. Those who die, and dying still can love, still
believe, do not die. They live still in the beloved. Gerald might still
have been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death. He might
have lived with his friend, a further life.

But now he