WOMEN IK LOVE 59

"What has your life been, so far?" "Oh — finding out things for myself — and getting experi- ences — and making things go." Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel. "I find," he said, "that one needs some one really pure, single activity — I should call love a single, pure activity. But I don't really love anybody — not now." "Have you ever really loved anybody?" asked Gerald. "Yes and no," replied Birkin. "Not finally?" said Gerald. "Finally — finally — no," said Birkin. "Nor I," said Gerald. "And do you want to?" said Birkin. Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look into the eyes of the other man. "I don't know," he said. "I do — I want to love," said Birkin. "You do?" "Yes. I want the finality of love." "The finality of love," repeated Gerald. And he waited for a moment. "Just one woman," he added. The evening light, flood- ing yellow along the fields, lit up Birkin's face with a tense, abstract steadfastness. Gerald still could not make it out. "Yes, one woman," said Birkin. But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than confident. "I don't believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will ever make my life," said Gerald. "Not the centre and core of it — the love between you and a woman?" asked Birkin. Gerald's eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he watched the other man. "I never quite feel it that way," he said. "You don't? Then wherein does life centre, for you?" "I don't know — that's what I want somebody to tell me. As far as I can make out, it doesn't centre at all. It is arti- ficially held together by the social mechanism." Birkin pondered as if he would crack something.