She seemed to want to serve him.
'Why don't you give me the glass—it is so clumsy for you,' he said.
He would much rather have had it, and seen her daintily served.
But she was silent, pleased with the disparity, with her self-abasement.
'You are quite EN MENAGE,' he said.
'Yes.
We aren't really at home to visitors,' said Winifred.
'You're not?
Then I'm an intruder?'
For once he felt his conventional dress was out of place, he was an outsider.
Gudrun was very quiet.
She did not feel drawn to talk to him.
At this stage, silence was best—or mere light words.
It was best to leave serious things aside.
So they talked gaily and lightly, till they heard the man below lead out the horse, and call it to 'back-back!' into the dog-cart that was to take Gudrun home.
So she put on her things, and shook hands with Gerald, without once meeting his eyes.
And she was gone.
The funeral was detestable.
Afterwards, at the tea-table, the daughters kept saying—'He was a good father to us—the best father in the world'—or else—'We shan't easily find another man as good as father was.'
Gerald acquiesced in all this.
It was the right conventional attitude, and, as far as the world went, he believed in the conventions.
He took it as a matter of course.
But Winifred hated everything, and hid in the studio, and cried her heart out, and wished Gudrun would come.
Luckily everybody was going away.
The Criches never stayed long at home.
By dinner-time, Gerald was left quite alone.
Even Winifred was carried off to London, for a few days with her sister Laura.
But when Gerald was really left alone, he could not bear it.
One day passed by, and another.
And all the time he was like a man hung in chains over the edge of an abyss.
Struggle as he might, he could not turn himself to the solid earth, he could not get footing.
He was suspended on the edge of a void, writhing.
Whatever he thought of, was the abyss—whether it were friends or strangers, or work or play, it all showed him only the same bottomless void, in which his heart swung perishing.
There was no escape, there was nothing to grasp hold of.
He must writhe on the edge of the chasm, suspended in chains of invisible physical life.
At first he was quiet, he kept still, expecting the extremity to pass away, expecting to find himself released into the world of the living, after this extremity of penance.
But it did not pass, and a crisis gained upon him.
As the evening of the third day came on, his heart rang with fear.
He could not bear another night. Another night was coming on, for another night he was to be suspended in chain of physical life, over the bottomless pit of nothingness. And he could not bear it.
He could not bear it.
He was frightened deeply, and coldly, frightened in his soul.
He did not believe in his own strength any more.
He could not fall into this infinite void, and rise again. If he fell, he would be gone for ever.
He must withdraw, he must seek reinforcements.
He did not believe in his own single self, any further than this.
After dinner, faced with the ultimate experience of his own nothingness, he turned aside.
He pulled on his boots, put on his coat, and set out to walk in the night.
It was dark and misty.
He went through the wood, stumbling and feeling his way to the Mill.
Birkin was away.