s
two people being in love for the whole of their lives--perhaps. But
marriage is neither here nor there, even then. If they are in love,
well and good. If not--why break eggs about it!'

'Yes,' said Gerald. 'That's how it strikes me. But what about Rupert?'

'I can't make out--neither can he nor anybody. He seems to think that
if you marry you can get through marriage into a third heaven, or
something--all very vague.'

'Very! And who wants a third heaven? As a matter of fact, Rupert has a
great yearning to be SAFE--to tie himself to the mast.'

'Yes. It seems to me he's mistaken there too,' said Gudrun. 'I'm sure a
mistress is more likely to be faithful than a wife--just because she is
her OWN mistress. No--he says he believes that a man and wife can go
further than any other two beings--but WHERE, is not explained. They
can know each other, heavenly and hellish, but particularly hellish, so
perfectly that they go beyond heaven and hell--into--there it all
breaks down--into nowhere.'

'Into Paradise, he says,' laughed Gerald.

Gudrun shrugged her shoulders. 'FE M'EN FICHE of your Paradise!' she
said.

'Not being a Mohammedan,' said Gerald. Birkin sat motionless, driving
the car, quite unconscious of what they said. And Gudrun, sitting
immediately behind him, felt a sort of ironic pleasure in thus exposing
him.

'He says,' she added, with a grimace of irony, 'that you can find an
eternal equilibrium in marriage, if you accept the unison, and still
leave yourself separate, don't try to fuse.'

'Doesn't inspire me,' said Gerald.

'That's just it,' said Gudrun.

'I believe in love, in a real ABANDON, if you're capable of it,' said
Gerald.

'So do I,' said she.

'And so does Rupert, too--though he is always shouting.'

'No,' said Gudrun. 'He won't abandon himself to the other person. You
can't be sure of him. That's the trouble I think.'

'Yet he wants marriage! Marriage--ET PUIS?'

'Le paradis!' mocked Gudrun.

Birkin, as he drove, felt a creeping of the spine, as if somebody was
threatening his neck. But he shrugged with indifference. It began to
rain. Here was a change. He stopped the car and got down to put up the
hood.

CHAPTER XXII.

WOMAN TO WOMAN

They came to the town, and left Gerald at the railway station. Gudrun
and Winifred were to come to tea with Birkin, who expected Ursula also.
In the afternoon, however, the first person to turn up was Hermione.
Birkin was out, so she w