‘Hallo, Rupert, where are you going?’

‘London. So are you, I suppose.’

‘Yes—’

Gerald’s eyes went over Birkin’s face in curiosity.

‘We’ll travel together if you like,’ he said.

‘Don’t you usually go first?’ asked Birkin.

‘I can’t stand the crowd,’ replied Gerald. ‘But third’ll be all right. There’s a restaurant car, we can have some tea.’

The two men looked at the station clock, having nothing further to say.

‘What were you reading in the paper?’ Birkin asked.

Gerald looked at him quickly.

‘Isn’t it funny, what they DO put in the newspapers,’ he said. ‘Here are two leaders—’ he held out his DAILY TELEGRAPH, ‘full of the ordinary newspaper cant—’ he scanned the columns down—‘and then there’s this little—I dunno what you’d call it, essay, almost—appearing with the leaders, and saying there must arise a man who will give new values to things, give us new truths, a new attitude to life, or else we shall be a crumbling nothingness in a few years, a country in ruin—’

‘I suppose that’s a bit of newspaper cant, as well,’ said Birkin.

‘It sounds as if the man meant it, and quite genuinely,’ said Gerald.

‘Give it to me,’ said Birkin, holding out his hand for the paper.

The train came, and they went on board, sitting on either side a little table, by the window, in the restaurant car. Birkin glanced over his paper, then looked up at Gerald, who was waiting for him.

‘I believe the man means it,’ he said, ‘as far as he means anything.’

‘And do you think it’s true? Do you think we really want a new gospel?’ asked Gerald.

Birkin shrugged his shoulders.

‘I think the people who say they want a new religion are the last to accept anything new. They want novelty right enough. But to stare straight at this life that we’ve brought upon ourselves, and reject it, absolutely smash up the old idols of ourselves, that we sh’ll never do. You’ve got very badly to want to get rid of the old, before anything new will appear—even in the self.’

Gerald watched him closely.

‘You think we ought to break up this life, just start and let fly?’ he asked.

‘This life. Yes I do. We’ve got to bust it completely, or shrivel inside it, as in a tight skin. For it won’t expand any more.’

There was a queer little smile in Gerald’s eyes, a look of amusement, calm and curious.

‘And how do you propose to begin? I suppose you mean, reform the whole order of society?’ he asked.

Birkin had a slight, tense frown between the brows. He too was impatient of the conversation.

‘I don’t propose at all,’ he replied. ‘When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self–important people.’