es me very much, Gerald,' he said, wrinkling his brows.

'I can see it does,' said Gerald, uncovering his mouth in a manly,
quick, soldierly laugh.

Gerald was held unconsciously by the other man. He wanted to be near
him, he wanted to be within his sphere of influence. There was
something very congenial to him in Birkin. But yet, beyond this, he did
not take much notice. He felt that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and
more durable truths than any the other man knew. He felt himself older,
more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and
brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich play
of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real content
of the words he never really considered: he himself knew better.

Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be FOND of him without
taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train
ran on, he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as
nothing to him.

Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: 'Well, if
mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like Sodom, and there is
this beautiful evening with the luminous land and trees, I am
satisfied. That which informs it all is there, and can never be lost.
After all, what is mankind but just one expression of the
incomprehensible. And if mankind passes away, it will only mean that
this particular expression is completed and done. That which is
expressed, and that which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished.
There it is, in the shining evening. Let mankind pass away--time it
did. The creative utterances will not cease, they will only be there.
Humanity doesn't embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more.
Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new
way. Let humanity disappear as quick as possible.'

Gerald interrupted him by asking,

'Where are you staying in London?'

Birkin looked up.

'With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and stop there
when I like.'

'Good idea--have a place more or less your own,' said Gerald.

'Yes. But I don't care for it much. I'm tired of the people I am bound
to find there.'

'What kind of people?'

'Art--music--London Bohemia--the most pettifogging calculating Bohemia
that ever reckoned its pennies. But there are a few decent people,
decent in some respects. They are really very thorough rejecters of the
world--perhaps they live onl