Who is Gerald Crich from Women in Love and what is their importance?

Gerald Crich is the son of the owner of the mines near Beldover. He is an effective industrialist, who transforms the business of coal mining from a profitless to an efficient enterprise, but the work leaves him ultimately dissatisfied, and he wants some other thing to fill him up. He finds this thing in Gudrun Brangwen, and he goes to her in the middle of the night, to find a peace sleeping in her arms. But he doesn't have enough regard for society to marry her properly, so they go away together to the Alps, where their relationship blossoms, and then turns over-ripe, as they torment each other. Neither can possess the other fully, and neither can be satisfied with a less-than-all relationship. eventually Gerald walks out into the snow and is killed.