Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if withheld and afraid.

‘We’ll leave it till I understand it better,’ he said, in a voice of excuse.

Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps a touch of contempt came into his heart.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You must tell me what you think, later. You know what I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An impersonal union that leaves one free.’

They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald all the time. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal man, which he usually saw in Gerald, and which usually he liked so much, but the man himself, complete, and as if fated, doomed, limited. This strange sense of