Page 274 - women-in-love

quite silent, waiting. Birkin also stood and watched, Gerald
came up in a boat.
‘You still here, Rupert?’ he said. ‘We can’t get them. The
bottom slopes, you know, very steep. The water lies between
two very sharp slopes, with little branch valleys, and God
knows where the drift will take you. It isn’t as if it was a
level bottom. You never know where you are, with the drag-
ging.’
‘Is there any need for you to be working?’ said Birkin.
‘Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?’
‘To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We’ll
find ‘em, before I go away from here.’
‘But the men would find them just the same without
you—why should you insist?’
Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affection-
ately on Birkin’s shoulder, saying:
‘Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s anybody’s
health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you feel
yourself?’
‘Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life—
you waste your best self.’
Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said:
‘Waste it? What else is there to do with it?’
‘But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into hor-
rors, and put a mill-stone of beastly memories round your
neck. Come away now.’
‘A mill-stone of beastly memories!’ Gerald repeated.
Then he put his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoul-
der. ‘God, you’ve got such a telling way of putting things,

274 Women in Love