Women in Love

'Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked

Ursula. 'That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it ever

wanted it.' 'Yes it did. It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your

will to the higher being,' said Birkin.

'What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.

'And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside

her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the

other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.' 'Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.

'It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,'

said Birkin. 'The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.' 'Good thing too,' said Ursula.

'Quite,' said Gerald, with a faint smile. 'There's more fun.' Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song: 'Isn't the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great

sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.' Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last

impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful

arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking

of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.

'Wouldn't you like a dress,' said Ursula to Hermione, 'of this yellow

spotted with orange--a cotton dress?' 'Yes,' said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the

thought come home to her and soothe her. 'Wouldn't it be pretty? I

should LOVE it.' And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real affection.

But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to the bottom, to

know what he meant by the dual will in horses. A flicker of excitement

danced on Gerald's face.

Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden bond of

deep affection and closeness.

'I really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and analysis

of life. I really DO want to see things in their entirety, with their

beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their natural holiness. Don't

you feel it, don't you feel you CAN'T be tortured into any more

knowledge?' said Hermione, stopping in front of Ursula, and turning to

her with clenched fists thrust downwards.

'Yes,' said Ursula. 'I do. I am sick of all this poking and prying.' 'I'm so glad you are. Sometimes,' said Hermione, again stopping

arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula, 'sometimes I wonder if

I OUGHT to submit to all this realisation, if I am not being weak in

rejecting it. But I feel I CAN'T--I CAN'T. It seems to destroy

EVERYTHING. All the beauty and the--and the true holiness is

destroyed--and I feel I can't live without them.' 'And it would be simply wrong to live without them,' cried Ursula. 'No,

it is so IRREVERENT to think that everything must be realised in the

head. Really, something must be left to the Lord, there always is and

always will be.' 'Yes,' said Hermione, reassured like a child, 'it should, shouldn't it?

And Rupert--' she lifted her face to the sky, in a muse--'he CAN only

tear things to pieces. He really IS like a boy who must pull everything

to pieces to see how it is made. And I can't think it is right--it does

seem so irreverent, as you say.' 'Like tearing open a bud to see what the flower will be like,' said

Ursula.