“What is?” re-echoed Birkin. And there was a mocking silence.
“There’s long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, before we disappear,” said Birkin.
“There is,” said Gerald. “But what sort of way?” He seemed to press the other man for knowledge which he himself knew far better than Birkin did.
“Right down the slopes of degeneration—mystic, universal degeneration. There are many stages of pure degradation to go through: agelong. We live on long after our death, and progressively, in progressive devolution.”
Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the time, as if, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, all about this: as if his own knowledge were direct and personal, whereas Birkin’s was a matter of observation and inference, not quite hitting the nail
