Women in Love

'But I'M happy--I think life is AWFULLY jolly,' she said.

'Good,' he answered, with a certain cold indifference.

She reached for a bit of paper which had wrapped a small piece of

chocolate she had found in her pocket, and began making a boat. He

watched her without heeding her. There was something strangely pathetic

and tender in her moving, unconscious finger-tips, that were agitated

and hurt, really.

'I DO enjoy things--don't you?' she asked.

'Oh yes! But it infuriates me that I can't get right, at the really

growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I CAN'T get

straight anyhow. I don't know what really to DO. One must do something

somewhere.' 'Why should you always be DOING?' she retorted. 'It is so plebeian. I

think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing but

just be oneself, like a walking flower.' 'I quite agree,' he said, 'if one has burst into blossom. But I can't

get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is blighted in the bud, or

has got the smother-fly, or it isn't nourished. Curse it, it isn't even

a bud. It is a contravened knot.' Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. But she was

anxious and puzzled. How was one to get out, anyhow. There must be a

way out somewhere.

There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for another

bit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.

'And why is it,' she asked at length, 'that there is no flowering, no

dignity of human life now?' 'The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There

are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush--and they look very

nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of

Sodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn't true

that they have any significance--their insides are full of bitter,

corrupt ash.' 'But there ARE good people,' protested Ursula.

'Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered

with fine brilliant galls of people.' Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too

picturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on.

'And if it is so, WHY is it?' she asked, hostile. They were rousing

each other to a fine passion of opposition.

'Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall

off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions

when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little

worms and dry-rot.' There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic.

Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of

everything but their own immersion.