Women in Love

'The point about love,' he said, his consciousness quickly adjusting

itself, 'is that we hate the word because we have vulgarised it. It

ought to be prescribed, tabooed from utterance, for many years, till we

get a new, better idea.' There was a beam of understanding between them.

'But it always means the same thing,' she said.

'Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,' he cried. 'Let the old

meanings go.' 'But still it is love,' she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow light

shone at him in her eyes.

He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing.

'No,' he said, 'it isn't. Spoken like that, never in the world. You've

no business to utter the word.' 'I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenant at

the right moment,' she mocked.

Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her

back to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the

water's edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himself

unconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that the

stem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staring

with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow,

slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.

He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after

that another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes,

crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling

possessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was all

intangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She could

not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of the

daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The

little flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks

in the distance.

'Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,' she said, afraid of being

any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.

She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank

towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond,

tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and

there. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?

'Look,' he said, 'your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and they

are a convoy of rafts.' Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy

bright little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay bright

candour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost in

tears.