Women in Love by D H Lawrence Chapter 5 Page 10

what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.’

‘You’ve got to start with material things,’ said Gerald. Which statement Birkin ignored.

‘And we’ve got to live for SOMETHING, we’re not just cattle that can graze and have done with it,’ said Gerald.

‘Tell me,’ said Birkin. ‘What do you live for?’

Gerald’s face went baffled.

‘What do I live for?’ he repeated. ‘I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.’

‘And what’s your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we’ve