Then, satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed, he went home away from her, drifting vaguely through the darkness, lapsed into the old fire of burning passion. Far away, far away, there seemed to be a small lament in the darkness. But what did it matter? What did it matter, what did anything matter save this ultimate and triumphant experience of physical passion, that had blazed up anew like a new spell of life. ‘I was becoming quite dead–alive, nothing but a word–bag,’ he said in triumph, scorning his other self. Yet somewhere far off and small, the other hovered.

The men were still dragging the lake when he got back. He stood on the bank and heard Gerald’s voice. The water was still booming in the night, the moon was fair, the hills beyond were elusive. The lake was sinking. There came the raw smell of the banks, in the night air.

Up at Shortlands there were lights in the windows, as if nobody had gone to bed. On the landing–stage was the old doctor, the father of the young man who was lost. He stood quite silent, waiting. Birkin also stood and watched, Gerald came up in a boat.

‘You still here, Rupert?’ he said. ‘We can’t get them. The bottom slopes, you know, very steep. The water lies between two very sharp slopes, with little branch valleys, and God knows where the drift will take you. It isn’t as if it was a level bottom. You never know where you are, with the dragging.’

‘Is there any need for you to be working?’ said Birkin. ‘Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?’

‘To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We’ll find ‘em, before I go away from here.’

‘But the men would find them just the same without you—why should you insist?’

Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder, saying:

‘Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s anybody’s health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you feel yourself?’

‘Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life—you waste your best self.’

Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said:

‘Waste it? What else is there to do with it?’

‘But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into horrors, and put a mill–stone of beastly memories round your neck. Come away now.’

‘A mill–stone of beastly memories!’ Gerald repeated. Then he put his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder. ‘God, you’ve got such a telling way of putting things, Rupert, you have.’

Birkin’s heart sank. He was irritated and weary of having a telling way of putting things.

‘Won’t you leave it? Come over to my place’—he urged as one urges a drunken man.

‘No,’ said Gerald coaxingly, his arm across the other man’s shoulder. ‘Thanks very much, Rupert—I shall be glad to come tomorrow, if that’ll do. You understand, don’t you? I want to see this job through. But I’ll come tomorrow, right enough. Oh, I’d rather come and have a chat with you than—than do anything else, I verily believe. Yes, I would. You mean a lot to me, Rupert, more than you know.’