Women in Love

How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and enter the car, and

be borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula

and Birkin! What an adventure life seemed at this moment! How deeply,

how suddenly she envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open

door--so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that was

gone and the world to come were nothing to her. Ah, if she could be

JUST LIKE THAT, it would be perfect.

For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt a want within

herself. She was unsure. She had felt that now, at last, in Gerald's

strong and violent love, she was living fully and finally. But when she

compared herself with Ursula, already her soul was jealous,

unsatisfied. She was not satisfied--she was never to be satisfied.

What was she short of now? It was marriage--it was the wonderful

stability of marriage. She did want it, let her say what she might. She

had been lying. The old idea of marriage was right even now--marriage

and the home. Yet her mouth gave a little grimace at the words. She

thought of Gerald and Shortlands--marriage and the home! Ah well, let

it rest! He meant a great deal to her--but--! Perhaps it was not in her

to marry. She was one of life's outcasts, one of the drifting lives

that have no root. No, no it could not be so. She suddenly conjured up

a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in

evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed

her. This picture she entitled 'Home.' It would have done for the Royal

Academy.

'Come with us to tea--DO,' said Ursula, as they ran nearer to the

cottage of Willey Green.

'Thanks awfully--but I MUST go in--' said Gudrun. She wanted very much

to go on with Ursula and Birkin.

That seemed like life indeed to her. Yet a certain perversity would not

let her.

'Do come--yes, it would be so nice,' pleaded Ursula.

'I'm awfully sorry--I should love to--but I can't--really--' She descended from the car in trembling haste.

'Can't you really!' came Ursula's regretful voice.

'No, really I can't,' responded Gudrun's pathetic, chagrined words out

of the dusk.

'All right, are you?' called Birkin.

'Quite!' said Gudrun. 'Good-night!' 'Good-night,' they called.

'Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,' called Birkin.

'Thank you very much,' called Gudrun, in the strange, twanging voice of

lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to him. She turned away to her

cottage gate, and they drove on. But immediately she stood to watch

them, as the car ran vague into the distance. And as she went up the

path to her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible

bitterness.