Ursula set off to Willey Green, towards the mill. She came to Willey
Water. It was almost full again, after its period of emptiness. Then
she turned off through the woods. The night had fallen, it was dark.
But she forgot to be afraid, she who had such great sources of fear.
Among the trees, far from any human beings, there was a sort of magic
peace. The more one could find a pure loneliness, with no taint of
people, the better one felt. She was in reality terrified, horrified in
her apprehension of people.
She started, noticing something on her right hand, between the tree
trunks. It was like a great presence, watching her, dodging her. She
started violently. It was only the moon, risen through the thin trees.
But it seemed so mysterious, with its white and deathly smile. And
there was no avoiding it. Night or day, one could not escape the
sinister face, triumphant and radiant like this moon, with a high
smile. She hurried on, cowering from the white planet. She would just
see the pond at the mill before she went home.
Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off
along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was
transcendent over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed
to it. There was a glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The
night was as clear as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant
coughing of a sheep.
So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above the pond,
where the alders twisted their roots. She was glad to pass into the
shade out of the moon. There she stood, at the top of the fallen-away
bank, her hand on the rough trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that
was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some
reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for
the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something else out
of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant
hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, lamenting
desolately.
She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin. He had come
back then, unawares. She accepted it without remark, nothing mattered
to her. She sat down among the roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled,
hearing the sound of the sluice like dew distilling audibly into the
night. The islands were dark and half revealed, the reeds were dark
also, only some of them had a little frail fire of reflection. A fish
leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. This fire of the
chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness, repelled her.
She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly, and noiseless and without
motion. Birkin, small and dark also, his hair tinged with moonlight,
wandered nearer. He was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He
did not know she was there. Supposing he did something he would not
wish to be seen doing, thinking he was quite private? But there, what
did it matter? What did the small priyacies matter? How could it
matter, what he did? How can there be any secrets, we are all the same
organisms? How can there be any secrecy, when everything is known to
all of us?