Women in Love

'You are sure you will come to Breadalby?' she said, urging.

'Yes, I should like to very much,' replied Ursula.

Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely

absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there.

'I'm so glad,' she said, pulling herself together. 'Some time in about

a fortnight. Yes? I will write to you here, at the school, shall I?

Yes. And you'll be sure to come? Yes. I shall be so glad. Good-bye!

Good-bye!' Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the other woman.

She knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and the knowledge strangely

exhilarated her. Also she was taking leave. It always gave her a sense

of strength, advantage, to be departing and leaving the other behind.

Moreover she was taking the man with her, if only in hate.

Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to

bid good-bye, he began to speak again.

'There's the whole difference in the world,' he said, 'between the

actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our

lot goes in for. In our night-time, there's always the electricity

switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really.

You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is,

lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You've got to do

it. You've got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being.

'But we have got such a conceit of ourselves--that's where it is. We

are so conceited, and so unproud. We've got no pride, we're all

conceit, so conceited in our own papier-mache realised selves. We'd

rather die than give up our little self-righteous self-opinionated

self-will.' There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful.

He sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no

attention, stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike.

Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she

was seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him--a curious

hidden richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like

another voice, conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves

of his brows and his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful

beauty of life itself. She could not say what it was. But there was a

sense of richness and of liberty.

'But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren't we?'

she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering

under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer,

careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows,

though his mouth did not relax.