sn't the last word--it
certainly isn't.'

'Quite,' said Gerald.

'In fact,' said Birkin, 'because the relation between man and woman is
made the supreme and exclusive relationship, that's where all the
tightness and meanness and insufficiency comes in.'

'Yes, I believe you,' said Gerald.

'You've got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal.
We want something broader. I believe in the ADDITIONAL perfect
relationship between man and man--additional to marriage.'

'I can never see how they can be the same,' said Gerald.

'Not the same--but equally important, equally creative, equally sacred,
if you like.'

'I know,' said Gerald, 'you believe something like that. Only I can't
FEEL it, you see.' He put his hand on Birkin's arm, with a sort of
deprecating affection. And he smiled as if triumphantly.

He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to him. He was
willing to condemn himself in marriage, to become like a convict
condemned to the mines of the underworld, living no life in the sun,
but having a dreadful subterranean activity. He was willing to accept
this. And marriage was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to
be sealed thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever
in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship with any
other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the committing of himself
into a relationship with Gudrun. It was a committing of himself in
acceptance of the established world, he would accept the established
order, in which he did not livingly believe, and then he would retreat
to the underworld for his life. This he would do.

The other way was to accept Rupert's offer of alliance, to enter into
the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, and then
subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself with the man he
would later be able to pledge himself with the woman: not merely in
legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic marriage.

Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness upon him, a
numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of atrophy. Perhaps it
was the absence of volition. For he was strangely elated at Rupert's
offer. Yet he was still more glad to reject it, not to be committed.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A CHAIR

There was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the old
market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down there one
afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and they wanted