, if all England
did suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.'

'It couldn't,' said Ursula. 'They are all too damp, the powder is damp
in them.'

'I'm not so sure of that,' said Gerald.

'Nor I,' said Birkin. 'When the English really begin to go off, EN
MASSE, it'll be time to shut your ears and run.'

'They never will,' said Ursula.

'We'll see,' he replied.

'Isn't it marvellous,' said Gudrun, 'how thankful one can be, to be out
of one's country. I cannot believe myself, I am so transported, the
moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I say to myself "Here steps a new
creature into life."'

'Don't be too hard on poor old England,' said Gerald. 'Though we curse
it, we love it really.'

To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words.

'We may,' said Birkin. 'But it's a damnably uncomfortable love: like a
love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a complication of
diseases, for which there is no hope.'

Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.

'You think there is no hope?' she asked, in her pertinent fashion.

But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question.

'Any hope of England's becoming real? God knows. It's a great actual
unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if
there were no Englishmen.'

'You think the English will have to disappear?' persisted Gudrun. It
was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her
own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on
Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as
out of some instrument of divination.

He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered:

'Well--what else is in front of them, but disappearance? They've got to
disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, anyhow.'

Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide and fixed
on him.

'But in what way do you mean, disappear?--' she persisted.

'Yes, do you mean a change of heart?' put in Gerald.

'I don't mean anything, why should I?' said Birkin. 'I'm an Englishman,
and I've paid the price of it. I can't talk about England--I can only
speak for myself.'

'Yes,' said Gudrun slowly, 'you love England immensely, IMMENSELY,
Rupert.'

'And leave her,' he replied.

'No, not for good. You'll come back,' said Gerald, nodding sagely.

'They say the lice crawl off a dying body,' said Birkin, with a glare
of bitterness. 'So I leave England.'

'Ah, but you'