Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.
There was no response from that which had been Gerald.
Strange, congealed, icy substance—no more.
No more!
Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day's business.
He did it all quietly, without bother.
To rant, to rave, to be tragic, to make situations—it was all too late.
Best be quiet, and bear one's soul in patience and in fullness.
But when he went in again, at evening, to look at Gerald between the candles, because of his heart's hunger, suddenly his heart contracted, his own candle all but fell from his hand, as, with a strange whimpering cry, the tears broke out.
He sat down in a chair, shaken by a sudden access.
Ursula who had followed him, recoiled aghast from him, as he sat with sunken head and body convulsively shaken, making a strange, horrible sound of tears.
'I didn't want it to be like this—I didn't want it to be like this,' he cried to himself.
Ursula could but think of the Kaiser's:
'Ich habe as nicht gewollt.'
She looked almost with horror on Birkin.
Suddenly he was silent.
But he sat with his head dropped, to hide his face.
Then furtively he wiped his face with his fingers. Then suddenly he lifted his head, and looked straight at Ursula, with dark, almost vengeful eyes.
'He should have loved me,' he said. 'I offered him.'
She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:
'What difference would it have made!'
'It would!' he said. 'It would.'
He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald.
With head oddly lifted, like a man who draws his head back from an insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, mute, material face.
It had a bluish cast.
It sent a shaft like ice through the heart of the living man.
Cold, mute, material!
Birkin remembered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, with a warm, momentaneous grip of final love.
For one second—then let go again, let go for ever.
If he had kept true to that clasp, death would not have mattered.
Those who die, and dying still can love, still believe, do not die.
They live still in the beloved.
Gerald might still have been living in the spirit with Birkin, even after death.
He might have lived with his friend, a further life.
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.