But now he was dead, like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice. Birkin looked at the pale fingers, the inert mass. He remembered a dead stallion he had seen: a dead mass of maleness, repugnant. He remembered also the beautiful face of one whom he had loved, and who had died still having the faith to yield to the mystery. That dead face was beautiful, no one could call it cold, mute, material. No one could remember it without gaining faith in the mystery, without the soul’s warming with new, deep life–trust.

And Gerald! The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, hardly able to beat. Gerald’s father had looked wistful, to break the heart: but not this last terrible look of cold, mute Matter. Birkin watched and watched.

Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the frozen face of the dead man. Both faces were unmoved and unmoving. The candle–flames flickered in the frozen air, in the intense silence.

‘Haven’t you seen enough?’ she said.

He got up.

‘It’s a bitter thing to me,’ he said.

‘What—that he’s dead?’ she said.

His eyes just met hers. He did not answer.

‘You’ve got me,’ she said.

He smiled and kissed her.

‘If I die,’ he said, ‘you’ll know I haven’t left you.’

‘And me?’ she cried.

‘And you won’t have left me,’ he said. ‘We shan’t have any need to despair, in death.’

She took hold of his hand.

‘But need you despair over Gerald?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he answered.

They went away. Gerald was taken to England, to be buried. Birkin and Ursula accompanied the body, along with one of Gerald’s brothers. It was the Crich brothers and sisters who insisted on the burial in England. Birkin wanted to leave the dead man in the Alps, near the snow. But the family was strident, loudly insistent.

Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursula stayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both very quiet.

‘Did you need Gerald?’ she asked one evening.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Aren’t I enough for you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.’

‘Why aren’t I enough?’ she said. ‘You are enough for me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with you?’

‘Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.’

‘Well—’ he said.

‘You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’