hink,' he said seriously. 'However you may be bored
by the ethics of marriage, yet really to marry, in one's own personal
case, is something critical, final-'

'You mean there is something final in going to the registrar with a
woman?'

'If you're coming back with her, I do,' said Gerald. 'It is in some way
irrevocable.'

'Yes, I agree,' said Birkin.

'No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter into the
married state, in one's own personal instance, is final-'

'I believe it is,' said Birkin, 'somewhere.'

'The question remains then, should one do it,' said Gerald.

Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes.

'You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,' he said. 'You argue it like a
lawyer--or like Hamlet's to-be-or-not-to-be. If I were you I would NOT
marry: but ask Gudrun, not me. You're not marrying me, are you?'

Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech.

'Yes,' he said, 'one must consider it coldly. It is something critical.
One comes to the point where one must take a step in one direction or
another. And marriage is one direction-'

'And what is the other?' asked Birkin quickly.

Gerald looked up at him with hot, strangely-conscious eyes, that the
other man could not understand.

'I can't say,' he replied. 'If I knew THAT--' He moved uneasily on his
feet, and did not finish.

'You mean if you knew the alternative?' asked Birkin. 'And since you
don't know it, marriage is a PIS ALLER.'

Gerald looked up at Birkin with the same hot, constrained eyes.

'One does have the feeling that marriage is a PIS ALLER,' he admitted.

'Then don't do it,' said Birkin. 'I tell you,' he went on, 'the same as
I've said before, marriage in the old sense seems to me repulsive.
EGOISME A DEUX is nothing to it. It's a sort of tacit hunting in
couples: the world all in couples, each couple in its own little house,
watching its own little interests, and stewing in its own little
privacy--it's the most repulsive thing on earth.'

'I quite agree,' said Gerald. 'There's something inferior about it. But
as I say, what's the alternative.'

'One should avoid this HOME instinct. It's not an instinct, it's a
habit of cowardliness. One should never have a HOME.'

'I agree really,' said Gerald. 'But there's no alternative.'

'We've got to find one. I do believe in a permanent union between a man
and a woman. Chopping about is merely an exhaustive process. But a
permanent relation between a man and a woman i