Then I'm afraid I can't come up to your expectations here, at any rate. You
think people should just do as they like.«
    »I think they always do. But I should like them to like the purely
individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. And they
only like to do the collective thing.«
    »And I,« said Gerald grimly, »shouldn't like to be in a world of people who
acted individually and spontaneously, as you call it. We should have everybody
cutting everybody else's throat in five minutes.«
    »That means you would like to be cutting everybody's throat,« said Birkin.
    »How does that follow?« asked Gerald crossly.
    »No man,« said Birkin, »cuts another man's throat unless he wants to cut it,
and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes
two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a murderee is a man
who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man who in a profound if
hidden lust desires to be murdered.«
    »Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,« said Gerald to Birkin. »As a matter of
fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and most other people would like to cut
it for us - some time or other -«
    »It's a nasty view of things, Gerald,« said Birkin, »and no wonder you are
afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.«
    »How am I afraid of myself?« said Gerald; »and I don't think I am unhappy.«
    »You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, and imagine
every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,« Birkin said.
    »How do you make that out?« said Gerald.
    »From you,« said Birkin.
    There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, that was very near
to love. It was always the same between them; always their talk brought them
into a deadly nearness of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either
hate or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if their going
apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really kept it to the level of trivial
occurrence. Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each
other, inwardly This they would never admit. They intended to keep their
relationship a casual free-and-easy