Birkin looked at him, and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I could not say.”
Gerald had been on the qui vive, as awaiting his fate. Now he drew back in his chair.
“No,” he said, “and neither do I, and neither do I.”
“We are different, you and I,” said Birkin. “I can’t tell your life.”
“No,” said Gerald, “no more can I. But I tell you—I begin to doubt it!”
“That you will ever love a woman?”
“Well—yes—what you would truly call love—”
“You doubt it?”
“Well—I begin to.”