“I think it’s awful cheek to write like that,” said the Pussum.
“Yes—yes, so do I,” said the Russian. “He is a megalomaniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks he is the Saviour of man—go on reading.”
“Surely,” Halliday intoned, “‘surely goodness and mercy hath followed me all the days of my life—’” he broke off and giggled. Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. “‘Surely there will come an end in us to this desire—for the constant going apart,—this passion for putting asunder—everything—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from part—reacting in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great reducing agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female from their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to lose ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and infinite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the hope of being burnt out utterly—’”
“I want to go,” said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the waiter. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The strange effect of Birkin’s letter read aloud in a perfect clerical sing-song, clear and resonant, phrase by phrase, made the blood mount into her head as if she were mad.
She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over to Halliday’s table. They all glanced up at her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Is that a genuine letter you are reading?”
“Oh yes,” said Halliday. “Quite genuine.”
“May I see?”
Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised.
“Thank you,” she said.