s pretty near.
He is a good many stages further than either you or I can go.'

'Yes, but stages further in what?' cried Gerald, irritated.

Birkin sighed, and gathered his brows into a knot of anger.

'Stages further in social hatred,' he said. 'He lives like a rat, in
the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless
pit. He's further on than we are. He hates the ideal more acutely. He
HATES the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him. I expect he is a
Jew--or part Jewish.'

'Probably,' said Gerald.

'He is a gnawing little negation, gnawing at the roots of life.'

'But why does anybody care about him?' cried Gerald.

'Because they hate the ideal also, in their souls. They want to explore
the sewers, and he's the wizard rat that swims ahead.'

Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside.

'I don't understand your terms, really,' he said, in a flat, doomed
voice. 'But it sounds a rum sort of desire.'

'I suppose we want the same,' said Birkin. 'Only we want to take a
quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy--and he ebbs with the
stream, the sewer stream.'

Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to
Loerke. It was no use beginning when the men were there. Then they
could get into no touch with the isolated little sculptor. He had to be
alone with them. And he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of
transmitter to Gudrun.

'Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?' Gudrun asked him one
evening.

'Not now,' he replied. 'I have done all sorts--except portraits--I
never did portraits. But other things--'

'What kind of things?' asked Gudrun.

He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room. He returned
almost immediately with a little roll of paper, which he handed to her.
She unrolled it. It was a photogravure reproduction of a statuette,
signed F. Loerke.

'That is quite an early thing--NOT mechanical,' he said, 'more
popular.'

The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a
great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud. She was
sitting sideways on the horse, her face in her hands, as if in shame
and grief, in a little abandon. Her hair, which was short and must be
flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering her hands.

Her limbs were young and tender. Her legs, scarcely formed yet, the
legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled
childishly over the side of