Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself in the human opinion. You do the same. If you are of high importance to humanity you are of high importance to yourself. That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five thousand times more important than if you cooked only your own dinner.'

`I suppose I am,' laughed Gerald.

`Can't you see,' said Birkin, `that to help my neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. "I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat" -- and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.'

`You've got to start with material things,' said Gerald. Which statement Birkin ignored.

`And we've got to live for something, we're not just cattle that can graze and have done with it,' said Gerald.

`Tell me,' said Birkin. `What do you live for?'

Gerald's face went baffled.

`What do I live for?' he repeated. `I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.'

`And what's your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we've got all the coal we want, and all the plush furniture, and pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and eaten, and we're all warm and our bellies are filled and we're listening to the young lady performing on the pianoforte -- what then? What then, when you've made a real fair start with your material things?'

Gerald sat laughing at the words and the mocking humour of the other man. But he was cogitating too.

`We haven't got there yet,' he replied. `A good many people are still waiting for the rabbit and the fire to cook it.'

`So while you get the coal I must chase the rabbit?' said Birkin, mocking at Gerald.

`Something like that,' said Gerald.

Birkin watched him narrowly. He saw the perfect good-humoured callousness, even strange, glistening malice, in Gerald, glistening through the plausible ethics of productivity.

`Gerald,' he said, `I rather hate you.'

`I know you do,' said Gerald. `Why do you?'

Birkin mused inscrutably for some minutes.

`I should like to know if you are conscious of hating me,' he said at last. `Do you ever consciously detest me -- hate me with mystic hate? There are odd moments when I hate you starrily.'

Gerald was rather taken aback, even a little disconcerted. He did not quite know what to say.

`I may, of course, hate you sometimes,' he said. `But I'm not aware of it -- never acutely aware of it, that is.'

`So much the worse,' said Birkin.