ie is astonishingly clever with that
plasticine stuff. Hermione declares she is an artist.' Gerald spoke in
the usual animated, chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed.
But Birkin's manner was full of reminder.

'Really! I didn't know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun WOULD teach her,
it would be perfect--couldn't be anything better--if Winifred is an
artist. Because Gudrun somewhere is one. And every true artist is the
salvation of every other.'

'I thought they got on so badly, as a rule.'

'Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit
to live in. If you can arrange THAT for Winifred, it is perfect.'

'But you think she wouldn't come?'

'I don't know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She won't go cheap
anywhere. Or if she does, she'll pretty soon take herself back. So
whether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here,
in Beldover, I don't know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred has
got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means of
being self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She'll never
get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself,
and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think
what her life will be like unless she does find a means of expression,
some way of fulfilment. You can see what mere leaving it to fate
brings. You can see how much marriage is to be trusted to--look at your
own mother.'

'Do you think mother is abnormal?'

'No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common
run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.'

'After producing a brood of wrong children,' said Gerald gloomily.

'No more wrong than any of the rest of us,' Birkin replied. 'The most
normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one by
one.'

'Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,' said Gerald with sudden
impotent anger.

'Well,' said Birkin, 'why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to be
alive--at other times it is anything but a curse. You've got plenty of
zest in it really.'

'Less than you'd think,' said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in
his look at the other man.

There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.

'I don't see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the
Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,' said Gerald.

'The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only
nobleman today, king and