Women in Love

'My love!' she cried, lifting her face and looking with frightened,

gentle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful

and soft and immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling

lightly to her, smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder,

hiding before him, because he could see her so completely. She knew he

loved her, and she was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new

heaven round about her. She wished he were passionate, because in

passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is

more frightening than force.

Again, quickly, she lifted her head.

'Do you love me?' she said, quickly, impulsively.

'Yes,' he replied, not heeding her motion, only her stillness.

She knew it was true. She broke away.

'So you ought,' she said, turning round to look at the road. 'Did you

find the rings?' 'Yes.' 'Where are they?' 'In my pocket.' She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.

She was restless.

'Shall we go?' she said.

'Yes,' he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left

behind them this memorable battle-field.

They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion

that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the

life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born

out of the cramp of a womb.

'Are you happy?' she asked him, in her strange, delighted way.

'Yes,' he said.

'So am I,' she cried in sudden ecstacy, putting her arm round him and

clutching him violently against her, as he steered the motor-car.

'Don't drive much more,' she said. 'I don't want you to be always doing

something.' 'No,' he said. 'We'll finish this little trip, and then we'll be free.' 'We will, my love, we will,' she cried in delight, kissing him as he

turned to her.

He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of his

consciousness broken. He seemed to be conscious all over, all his body

awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as if he had just come

awake, like a thing that is born, like a bird when it comes out of an

egg, into a new universe.

They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly Ursula

recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the form of

Southwell Minster.

'Are we here!' she cried with pleasure.

The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the gloom of the

coming night, as they entered the narrow town, the golden lights showed

like slabs of revelation, in the shop-windows.