Women in Love

They came to the town, and left Gerald at the railway station. Gudrun

and Winifred were to come to tea with Birkin, who expected Ursula also.

In the afternoon, however, the first person to turn up was Hermione.

Birkin was out, so she went in the drawing-room, looking at his books

and papers, and playing on the piano. Then Ursula arrived. She was

surprised, unpleasantly so, to see Hermione, of whom she had heard

nothing for some time.

'It is a surprise to see you,' she said.

'Yes,' said Hermione--'I've been away at Aix--' 'Oh, for your health?' 'Yes.' The two women looked at each other. Ursula resented Hermione's long,

grave, downward-looking face. There was something of the stupidity and

the unenlightened self-esteem of a horse in it. 'She's got a

horse-face,' Ursula said to herself, 'she runs between blinkers.' It

did seem as if Hermione, like the moon, had only one side to her penny.

There was no obverse. She stared out all the time on the narrow, but to

her, complete world of the extant consciousness. In the darkness, she

did not exist. Like the moon, one half of her was lost to life. Her

self was all in her head, she did not know what it was spontaneously to

run or move, like a fish in the water, or a weasel on the grass. She

must always KNOW.

But Ursula only suffered from Hermione's one-sidedness. She only felt

Hermione's cool evidence, which seemed to put her down as nothing.

Hermione, who brooded and brooded till she was exhausted with the ache

of her effort at consciousness, spent and ashen in her body, who gained

so slowly and with such effort her final and barren conclusions of

knowledge, was apt, in the presence of other women, whom she thought

simply female, to wear the conclusions of her bitter assurance like

jewels which conferred on her an unquestionable distinction,

established her in a higher order of life. She was apt, mentally, to

condescend to women such as Ursula, whom she regarded as purely

emotional. Poor Hermione, it was her one possession, this aching

certainty of hers, it was her only justification. She must be confident

here, for God knows, she felt rejected and deficient enough elsewhere.

In the life of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And

she wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism at the

bottom of her. She did not believe in her own universals--they were

sham. She did not believe in the inner life--it was a trick, not a

reality. She did not believe in the spiritual world--it was an

affectation. In the last resort, she believed in Mammon, the flesh, and

the devil--these at least were not sham. She was a priestess without

belief, without conviction, suckled in a creed outworn, and condemned

to the reiteration of mysteries that were not divine to her. Yet there

was no escape. She was a leaf upon a dying tree. What help was there

then, but to fight still for the old, withered truths, to die for the

old, outworn belief, to be a sacred and inviolate priestess of

desecrated mysteries? The old great truths BAD been true. And she was a

leaf of the old great tree of knowledge that was withering now. To the

old and last truth then she must be faithful even though cynicism and

mockery took place at the bottom of her soul.