“Do you think mother is abnormal?”
“No! I think she only wanted something more, or other than the common run of life. And not getting it, she has gone wrong perhaps.”
“After producing a brood of wrong children,” said Gerald gloomily.
“No more wrong than any of the rest of us,” Birkin replied. “The most normal people have the worst subterranean selves, take them one by one.”
“Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,” said Gerald with sudden impotent anger.
“Well,” said Birkin, “why not! Let it be a curse sometimes to be alive—at other times it is anything but a curse. You’ve got plenty of zest in it really.”
“Less than you’d think,” said Gerald, revealing a strange poverty in his look at the other man.
There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
“I don’t see what she has to distinguish between teaching at the Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,” said Gerald.
“The difference between a public servant and a private one. The only nobleman today, king and only aristocrat, is the public, the public. You are quite willing to serve the public—but to be a private tutor—”