‘They are all alike. Look at Birkin. Built out of the limitation of conceit they are, and nothing else. Really, nothing but their ridiculous limitation and intrinsic insignificance could make them so conceited.

‘As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him than in a Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to him. He would grind on at the old mills forever. And really, there is no corn between the millstones any more. They grind on and on, when there is nothing to grind—saying the same things, believing the same things, acting the same things. Oh, my God, it would wear out the patience of a stone.

‘I don’t worship Loerke, but at any rate, he is a free individual. He is not stiff with conceit of his own maleness. He is not grinding dutifully at the old mills. Oh God, when I think of Gerald, and his work—those offices at Beldover, and the mines—it makes my heart sick. What HAVE I to do with it—and him thinking he can be a lover to a woman! One might as well ask it of a self–satisfied lamp–post. These men, with their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God that keep on grinding at nothing! It is too boring, just boring. However did I come to take him seriously at all!

‘At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all. And there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing to go to these eurythmic displays, and the German opera, the German theatre. It WILL be amusing to take part in German Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. One will escape from so much, that is the chief thing, escape so much hideous boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. I don’t delude myself that I shall find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know I shan’t. But I shall get away from people who have their own homes and their own children and their own acquaintances and their own this and their own that. I shall be among people who DON’T own things and who HAVEN’T got a home and a domestic servant in the background, who haven’t got a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends of the same. Oh God, the wheels within wheels of people, it makes one’s head tick like a clock, with a very madness of dead mechanical monotony and meaninglessness. How I HATE life, how I hate it. How I hate the Geralds, that they can offer one nothing else.

‘Shortlands!—Heavens! Think of living there, one week, then the next, and THEN THE THIRD—

‘No, I won’t think of it—it is too much.’

And she broke off, really terrified, really unable to bear any more.

The thought of the mechanical succession of day following day, day following day, AD INFINITUM, was one of the things that made her heart palpitate with a real approach of madness. The terrible bondage of this tick–tack of time, this twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of hours and days—oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. And there was no escape from it, no escape.