Women in Love

'I'm glad you bought them,' she said, putting her hand, half

unwillingly, gently on his arm.

He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But he was angry at

the bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He knew she had a passion for

him, really. But it was not finally interesting. There were depths of

passion when one became impersonal and indifferent, unemotional.

Whereas Ursula was still at the emotional personal level-always so

abominably personal. He had taken her as he had never been taken

himself. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame-like a

demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of

the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting

finally. As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to

accept him at the quick of death?

She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was

soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and

their motives-Gudrun, Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much

interested any more in personalities and in people-people were all

different, but they were all enclosed nowadays in a definite

limitation, he said; there were only about two great ideas, two great

streams of activity remaining, with various forms of reaction

therefrom. The reactions were all varied in various people, but they

followed a few great laws, and intrinsically there was no difference.

They acted and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and

once the laws, the great principles, were known, people were no longer

mystically interesting. They were all essentially alike, the

differences were only variations on a theme. None of them transcended

the given terms.

Ursula did not agree-people were still an adventure to her-but-perhaps

not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was

something mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest

was destructive, her analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was

an under-space in her where she did not care for people and their

idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. She seemed to touch for a moment

this undersilence in herself, she became still, and she turned for a

moment purely to Birkin.

'Won't it be lovely to go home in the dark?' she said. 'We might have

tea rather late-shall we?-and have high tea? Wouldn't that be rather

nice?' 'I promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,' he said.

'But-it doesn't matter-you can go tomorrow-' 'Hermione is there,' he said, in rather an uneasy voice. 'She is going

away in two days. I suppose I ought to say good-bye to her. I shall

never see her again.' Ursula drew away, closed in a violent silence. He knitted his brows,

and his eyes began to sparkle again in anger.