Women in Love

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?