The little smile began to die out of Gerald’s eyes, and he said, looking with a cool stare at Birkin:

‘So you really think things are very bad?’

‘Completely bad.’

The smile appeared again.

‘In what way?’

‘Every way,’ said Birkin. ‘We are such dreary liars. Our one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and the Sunday newspapers. It is very dreary.’