He was always uneasy on this score.
He did not WANT to claim social superiority, yet he WOULD not claim intrinsic personal superiority, because he would never base his standard of values on pure being.
So he wobbled upon a tacit assumption of social standing.
No, Birkin wanted him to accept the fact of intrinsic difference between human beings, which he did not intend to accept.
It was against his social honour, his principle.
He rose to go.
'I've been neglecting my business all this while,' he said smiling.
'I ought to have reminded you before,' Birkin replied, laughing and mocking.
'I knew you'd say something like that,' laughed Gerald, rather uneasily.
'Did you?'
'Yes, Rupert.
It wouldn't do for us all to be like you are—we should soon be in the cart.
When I am above the world, I shall ignore all businesses.'
'Of course, we're not in the cart now,' said Birkin, satirically.
'Not as much as you make out.
At any rate, we have enough to eat and drink—'
'And be satisfied,' added Birkin.
Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin whose throat was exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractively on the warm brow, above the eyes that were so unchallenged and still in the satirical face.
Gerald, full-limbed and turgid with energy, stood unwilling to go, he was held by the presence of the other man.
He had not the power to go away.
'So,' said Birkin. 'Good-bye.'
And he reached out his hand from under the bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering look.
'Good-bye,' said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his friend in a firm grasp. 'I shall come again.
I miss you down at the mill.'
'I'll be there in a few days,' said Birkin.
The eyes of the two men met again.
Gerald's, that were keen as a hawk's, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love, Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yet with a kind of warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald's brain like a fertile sleep.
'Good-bye then.
There's nothing I can do for you?'
'Nothing, thanks.'
Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of the door, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.
Chapter 17 The Industrial Magnate
In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval.
It seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world.
She had her own friends, her own activities, her own life.
She turned back to the old ways with zest, away from him.
And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of Gerald Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almost indifferent to the thought of him.
She was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new form of life.
All the time, there was something in her urging her to avoid the final establishing of a relationship with Gerald.
She felt it would be wiser and better to have no more than a casual acquaintance with him.
She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend who was a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whose hobby was jewel-making.
The emotional, rather rootless life of the Russians appealed to her.
She did not want to go to Paris.
Paris was dry, and essentially boring.
She would like to go to Rome, Munich, Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow.
She had a friend in St Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, asking about rooms.
She had a certain amount of money.
She had come home partly to save, and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in various shows.
She knew she could become quite the 'go' if she went to London.
But she knew London, she wanted something else.