‘No,’ he said, ‘we’ve never had much illness in the house, either—not till father.’ He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he continued: ‘It’s something you don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And then you realise that it was there all the time—it was always there—you understand what I mean?—the possibility of this incurable illness, this slow death.’

He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.

‘I know,’ murmured Gudrun: ‘it is dreadful.’

He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in thought.

‘I don’t know what the effect actually IS, on one,’ he said, and again he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with knowledge, looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face. ‘But I absolutely am not the same. There’s nothing left, if you understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know what to DO.’

‘No,’ she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, almost pleasure, almost pain. ‘What can be done?’ she added.

He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great marble hearth–stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar.

‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ he replied. ‘But I do think you’ve got to find some way of resolving the situation—not because you want to, but because you’ve GOT to, otherwise you’re done. The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are just holding it up with your hands. Well, it’s a situation that obviously can’t continue. You can’t stand holding the roof up with your hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you’ll HAVE to let go. Do you understand what I mean? And so something’s got to be done, or there’s a universal collapse—as far as you yourself are concerned.’

He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel. He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble panels of the fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above him. She felt as if she were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some horrible and fatal trap.

‘But what CAN be done?’ she murmured humbly. ‘You must use me if I can be of any help at all—but how can I? I don’t see how I CAN help you.’

He looked down at her critically.

‘I don’t want you to HELP,’ he said, slightly irritated, ‘because there’s nothing to be DONE. I only want sympathy, do you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And there IS nobody to talk to sympathetically. That’s the curious thing. There IS nobody. There’s Rupert Birkin. But then he ISN’T sympathetic, he wants to DICTATE. And that is no use whatsoever.’