The Rainbow

She was isolated now from the life of her childhood, a

foreigner in a new life, of work and mechanical consideration.

She and Maggie, in their dinner-hours and their occasional teas

at the little restaurant, discussed life and ideas. Maggie was a

great suffragette, trusting in the vote. To Ursula the vote was

never a reality. She had within her the strange, passionate

knowledge of religion and living far transcending the limits of

the automatic system that contained the vote. But her

fundamental, organic knowledge had as yet to take form and rise

to utterance. For her, as for Maggie, the liberty of woman meant

something real and deep. She felt that somewhere, in something,

she was not free. And she wanted to be. She was in revolt. For

once she were free she could get somewhere. Ah, the wonderful,

real somewhere that was beyond her, the somewhere that she felt

deep, deep inside her.

In coming out and earning her own living she had made a

strong, cruel move towards freeing herself. But having more

freedom she only became more profoundly aware of the big want.

She wanted so many things. She wanted to read great, beautiful

books, and be rich with them; she wanted to see beautiful

things, and have the joy of them for ever; she wanted to know

big, free people; and there remained always the want she could

put no name to.

It was so difficult. There were so many things, so much to

meet and surpass. And one never knew where one was going. It was

a blind fight. She had suffered bitterly in this school of St.

Philip's. She was like a young filly that has been broken in to

the shafts, and has lost its freedom. And now she was suffering

bitterly from the agony of the shafts. The agony, the galling,

the ignominy of her breaking in. This wore into her soul. But

she would never submit. To shafts like these she would never

submit for long. But she would know them. She would serve them

that she might destroy them.

She and Maggie went to all kinds of places together, to big

suffrage meetings in Nottingham, to concerts, to theatres, to

exhibitions of pictures. Ursula saved her money and bought a

bicycle, and the two girls rode to Lincoln, to Southwell, and

into Derbyshire. They had an endless wealth of things to talk

about. And it was a great joy, finding, discovering.

But Ursula never told about Winifred Inger. That was a sort

of secret side-show to her life, never to be opened. She did not

even think of it. It was the closed door she had not the

strength to open.

Once she was broken in to her teaching, Ursula began

gradually to have a new life of her own again. She was going to

college in eighteen months' time. Then she would take her

degree, and she would--ah, she would perhaps be a big

woman, and lead a movement. Who knows?--At any rate she

would go to college in eighteen months' time. All that mattered

now was work, work.