“Isn’t he angry with his mother country!” laughed Gerald, amused.
“Ah, a patriot!” said Gudrun, with something like a sneer.
Birkin refused to answer any more.
Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. Then she turned away. It was finished, her spell of divination in him. She felt already purely cynical. She looked at Gerald. He was wonderful like a piece of radium to her. She felt she could consume herself and know all, by means of this fatal, living metal. She smiled to herself at her fancy. And what would she do with herself, when she had destroyed herself? For if spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is indestructible.
He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the moment. She stretched out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of green tulle, and touched his chin with her subtle, artist’s fingers.
“What are they then?” she asked, with a strange, knowing smile.
“What?” he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating with wonder.
“Your thoughts.”
Gerald looked like a man coming awake.
“I think I had none,” he said.