matter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail on the
head:--though aiming near enough at it. But he was not going to give
himself away. If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would
never help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end.

'Of course,' he said, with a startling change of conversation, 'it is
father who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the world
collapses. All his care now is for Winnie--he must save Winnie. He says
she ought to be sent away to school, but she won't hear of it, and
he'll never do it. Of course she IS in rather a queer way. We're all of
us curiously bad at living. We can do things--but we can't get on with
life at all. It's curious--a family failing.'

'She oughtn't to be sent away to school,' said Birkin, who was
considering a new proposition.

'She oughtn't. Why?'

'She's a queer child--a special child, more special even than you. And
in my opinion special children should never be sent away to school.
Only moderately ordinary children should be sent to school--so it seems
to me.'

'I'm inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would probably
make her more normal if she went away and mixed with other children.'

'She wouldn't mix, you see. YOU never really mixed, did you? And she
wouldn't be willing even to pretend to. She's proud, and solitary, and
naturally apart. If she has a single nature, why do you want to make
her gregarious?'

'No, I don't want to make her anything. But I think school would be
good for her.'

'Was it good for you?'

Gerald's eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture to him. Yet he
had not questioned whether one should go through this torture. He
seemed to believe in education through subjection and torment.

'I hated it at the time, but I can see it was necessary,' he said. 'It
brought me into line a bit--and you can't live unless you do come into
line somewhere.'

'Well,' said Birkin, 'I begin to think that you can't live unless you
keep entirely out of the line. It's no good trying to toe the line,
when your one impulse is to smash up the line. Winnie is a special
nature, and for special natures you must give a special world.'

'Yes, but where's your special world?' said Gerald.

'Make it. Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the
world down to fit yourself. As a matter of fact, two exceptional people
make another world. You and I, we make another, separate world. You
don'