look before and after,’ said Gerald.

‘NOR pine for what is not,’ said Birkin.

Gerald looked into the distance, with the small-pupilled, abstract eyes of a hawk.

‘No. There’s something final about this. And Gudrun seems like the end, to me. I don’t know — but she seems so soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft. And it withers my consciousness, somehow, it burns the pith of my mind.’ He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. ‘It blasts your soul’s eye,’ he said, ‘and leaves you sightless. Yet you WANT to be sightless, you WANT to be blasted, you don’t want it any different.’