“Don’t be too hard on poor old England,” said Gerald. “Though we curse it, we love it really.”
To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words.
“We may,” said Birkin. “But it’s a damnably uncomfortable love: like a love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a complication of diseases, for which there is no hope.”
Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
“You think there is no hope?” she asked, in her pertinent fashion.
But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a question.
“Any hope of England’s becoming real? God knows. It’s a great actual unreality now, an aggregation into unreality. It might be real, if there were no Englishmen.”
“You think the English will have to disappear?” persisted Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. It might have been her own fate she was inquiring after. Her dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, as if she could conjure the truth of the future out of him, as out of some instrument of divination.
He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered:
“Well—what else is in front of them, but disappearance? They’ve got to disappear from their own special brand of Englishness, anyhow.”