 CHAPTER XII. Even at its stormiest, Sunday was a blessed day. Ursula woke to it with a feeling of immense relief. She wondered why her heart was so light. Then she remembered it was Sunday. A gladness seemed to burst out around her, a feeling of great freedom. The whole world was, for twenty-four hours revoked, put back. Only the Sunday world existed. She loved the very confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirp began, announcing the creation of a new day. There was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts with pink legs and glistening flossy hair, all clean from the Saturday's night bathing, their souls excited by their body's cleanliness. As the house began to team with rushing half-naked, clean children, one of the parents rose, either the mother, easy and slatternly, with her thick, dark hair loosely coiled and slipping over one ear, or the father, warm and comfortable, with ruffled black hair and shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Then the girls upstairs heard the continual, Now then, Billy, what are you up to? In the father's strong, vibrating voice, or the mother's dignified, I have said, Cassie, I will not have it. It was amazing how the father's voice could ring out like a gong without his being in the least moved, and how the mother could speak like a queen holding an audience, though her blouse was sticking out all round and her hair was not fastened up, and the children were yelling a pandemonium. Gradually breakfast was produced, and the elder girls came down into the babble whilst half-naked children flitted round like the wrong ends of cherubs, as Goodrin said, watching the bare little legs and the chubby tails appearing and disappearing. Gradually the young ones were captured, and night dresses finally removed, ready for the clean Sunday shirt. But before the Sunday shirt was slipped over the fleecy head, a wade darted the naked body to wallow in the sheepskin, which formed the parlor rug, whilst the mother walked after, protesting sharply, holding the shirt like a noose, and the father's bronze voice rang out and the naked child wallowing on its back in the deep sheepskin announced gleefully, I'm baiting in the sea, mother. Why should I walk after you with your shirt, said the mother? Get up now. I'm baiting in the sea, mother, repeated the wallowing naked figure. We say bathing, not baiting, said the mother with her strange and different dignity. I am waiting here with your shirt. At length shirts were on, and stockings were paired, and little trousers buttoned, and little petticoats tied behind. The besetting cowardice of the family was at shirking of the garter question. Where are your garters, Cassie? I don't know. Well, look for them. But not one of the elder Brangwins would really face the situation. After Cassie had groveled under all the furniture and blacked up all her Sunday cleanliness to the infinite grief of everybody, the garter was forgotten in the new washing of the young face in hands. Later Ursula would be indignant to see Miss Cassie marching into church from Sunday school, with her stockings slothered down to her ankle and a grubby knee showing. It's disgraceful, cried Ursula at dinner. People will think we're pigs, and the children are never washed. Never mind what people think, said the mother superbly. I see that the child is bathed properly, and if I satisfy myself, I satisfy everybody. She can't keep her stocking up in no garter, and it isn't the child's fault she was let to go without one. The garter trouble continued in varying degrees, but till each child wore long skirts or long trousers it was not removed. On this day of decorum the Brangwins family went to church by the High Road, making a detour outside all the garden hedge, rather than climb the wall into the churchyard. There was no law of this from the parents. The children themselves were the wardens of the Sabbath decency. Very jealous and instant with each other. It came to be, gradually, that after church on Sundays the house was really something of a sanctuary, with peace breathing like a strange bird alighted in the rooms. Indoors only reading and tail-telling in quiet pursuits, such as drawing, were allowed. Out of doors all playing was to be carried on unobtrusively. If there were noise yelling or shouting, then some fierce spirit woke up in the father and the elder children so that the younger were subdued afraid of being excommunicated. The children themselves preserved the Sabbath. If Ursula in her vanity sang, il était un vergeré et ran ran ran pediped-upon, Teresa was sure to cry, that's not a Sunday song, our Ursula. "'You don't know,' replied Ursula, superior, nevertheless she wavered, and her song faded down before she came to the end. Because though she did not know it, her Sunday was very precious to her. She found herself in a strange undefined place where her spirit could wander in dreams unassailed. The white-robed spirit of Christ passed between olive trees. It was a vision, not a reality, and she herself partook of the visionary being. There was the voice in the night calling Samuel, Samuel, and still the voice called in the night, but not this night, nor last night, but in the unfathomed night of Sunday of the Sabbath silence. There was sin, the serpent in whom was also wisdom. There was Judas with the money and the kiss. But there was no actual sin. If Ursula slapped Teresa across the face, even on a Sunday, that was not sin, the everlasting. It was misbehavior. If Billy played truant from Sunday school he was bad, he was wicked, but he was not a sinner. Sin was absolute and everlasting. Wickedness and badness were temporary and relative. When Billy, catching up the local jargon, called Cassie a sinner, everybody detested him. Yet when there came to the marsh a flippity-floppity fox-hound puppy, he was mischievously christened sinner. The Brangwins shrank from applying their religion to their own immediate actions. They wanted the sense of the eternal and immortal, not a list of rules for everyday conduct. Therefore there were badly behaved children, headstrong and arrogant, though their feelings were generous. They had, moreover, intolerable to their ordinary neighbors, a proud gesture that did not fit with the jealous idea of the democratic Christian, so that they were always extraordinary outside of the ordinary. How bitterly Ursula resented her first acquaintance with evangelical teachings, she got a peculiar thrill from the application of salvation to her own personal case. Jesus died for me, he suffered for me. There was a pride and a thrill in it, followed almost immediately by a sense of dreariness. Jesus with holes in his hands and feet, it was distasteful to her. The shadowy Jesus with the stigmata, that was her own vision. But Jesus, the actual man talking with teeth and lips, telling one to put one's finger into his wounds, like a villager gloating in his sores, repelled her. She was enemy of those who insisted on the humanity of Christ, if he were just a man living an ordinary human life, then she was indifferent. But it was the jealousy of vulgar people which must insist on the humanity of Christ. It was the vulgar mind which would allow nothing extra human, nothing beyond itself to exist. It was the dirty desecrating hands of the revivalists which wanted to drag Jesus into this everyday life, to dress Jesus up in trousers and frat coat, to compel him to a vulgar equality of footing. It was the impudent suburban soul which would ask, what would Jesus do if he were in my shoes? Against all this the Brangwins stood at bay. If any one it was the mother who was caught by, or who was most careless of the vulgar clamour. She would have nothing extra human. She never really subscribed all her life to Brangwins' mystical passion. But Ursula was with her father. As she became adolescent, thirteen, fourteen, she set more and more against her mother's practical indifference. To Ursula there was something callous, almost wicked in her mother's attitude. What did Anna Brangwins in these years care for God or Jesus or angels? She was the immediate life of today. Children were still being born to her. She was throng with all the little activities of her family. And almost instinctively she resented her husband's slavish service to the church, his dark subject hankering to worship an unseen God. What did the unrevealed God matter when a man had a young family that needed fettling for? Let him attend to the immediate concerns of his life, not go projecting himself towards the ultimate. But Ursula was all for the ultimate. She was always in revolt against babies and muddled domesticity. To her, Jesus was another world. He was not of this world. He did not thrust his hands under her face and pointing to his wounds, saying, Look, Ursula Brangwins, I got these for your sake, now do as you're told. To her, Jesus was beautifully remote, shining in the distance like a white moon at sunset, a crescent moon beckoning as it follows the sun out of our ken. Sometimes dark clouds standing very far off, pricking up into a clear yellow band of sunset of a winter evening, reminded her of Calvary. Sometimes the full moon rising blood red upon the hill terrified her with the knowledge that Christ was now dead, hanging heavy and dead upon the cross. On Sundays this visionary world came to pass. She heard the long hush, she knew the marriage of dark and light was taking place. In church the voice sounded, re-echoing not from this world as if the church itself were a shell that still spoke the language of creation. The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be in hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in under the daughters of men, and they bear children under them, the same being mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Over this Ursula was stirred as by a call from far off. In those days would not the sons of God have found her fair, would she not have been taken to wife by one of the sons of God? It was a dream that frightened her, for she could not understand it. Who were the sons of God? Was not Jesus the only begotten Son? Was not Adam the only man created from God? But there were men not begotten by Adam, who were these, and whence did they come? They too must derive from God. Had God many offspring, besides Adam and besides Jesus, children whose origin the children of Adam cannot recognize? And perhaps these children, these sons of God, had known no expulsion, no ignominy of the fall. These came on free feet to the daughters of men, and saw they were fair, and took them to wife, so that the women conceived and brought forth men of renown. This was a genuine fake. She moved about in the essential days when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men. Nor would any comparison of myths destroy her passion and the knowledge. Jove had become a bull or a man in order to love a mortal woman. He had begotten in her a giant, a hero. Very good. So he had, in Greece. For herself she was no Grecian woman. Not Jove nor Pan nor any of those gods, not even Bacchus nor Apollo, could come to her. But the sons of God who took to wife the daughters of men, these were such as should take her to wife. She clung to the secret hope, the aspiration. She lived a dual life, one where the facts of daily life encompassed everything, being legion, and the other wherein the facts of daily life were superseded by the eternal truth. So utterly did she desire the sons of God should come to the daughters of men, and she believed more in her desire and its fulfillment than in the obvious facts of life. The fact that a man was a man did not state his dissent from Adam, did not exclude that he was also one of the unhistoryed, unaccountable sons of God. As yet she was confused, but not denied. Again she heard the voice. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven. But it was explained that the needle's eye was a little gateway for foot-passengers, through which the great humped camel with his load could not possibly squeeze himself, or perhaps at a great risk if he were a little camel he might get through. For one could not absolutely exclude the rich man from heaven, said the Sunday school teachers. It pleased her also to know that in the east one must use hyperbola, or else remain unheard, because the eastern man must see a thing swelling to fill all heaven, or dwindle to a mere nothing before he is suitably impressed. She immediately sympathized with this eastern mind. Yet the words continued to have a meaning that was untouched, either by the knowledge of gateways or hyperbolas. The historical, or local, or psychological interest in the words was another thing. There remained unaltered the inexplicable value of the saying. What was this relation between a needle's eye, a rich man, and heaven? What sort of a needle's eye? What sort of a rich man? What sort of heaven? Who knows? It means the absolute world, and can never be more than half interpreted in terms of the relative world. But must one apply the speech literally? Was her father a rich man? Couldn't he get to heaven? Or was he only a half-rich man, or was he merely a poor man? At any rate, unless he gave everything away to the poor, he would find it much harder to get to heaven. The needle's eye would be too tight for him. She almost wished he were penniless poor. If one were coming to the base of it, any man was rich who was not as poor as the poorest. She had her qualms. In an imagination she saw her father giving away their piano and the two cows, and the capital at the bank, to the laborers of the district, so that they, the Brangwins, should be as poor as the wearies. And she did not want it. She was impatient. Very well, she thought, we'll forego that heaven, that's all, at any rate the needle's eye sort. And she dismissed the problem. She was not going to be as poor as the wearies, not for all the sayings on earth, the miserable squalid wearies. So she reverted to the non-literal application of the scriptures. Her father very rarely read, but he had collected many books of reproductions, and he would sit and look at these, curiously intent, like a child, yet with a passion that was not childish. He loved the early Italian painters, but particularly Ghiato and Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi. The great compositions cast a spell over him. How many times had he turned to Raphael's dispute of the sacrament, or Fra Angelico's last judgment, or the beautiful complicated renderings of the adoration of the Magi? And always, each time, he received the same gradual fulfillment of delight. It had to do with the establishment of a whole mystical architectural conception which used the human figure as a unit. Sometimes he had to hurry home and go to the Fra Angelico last judgment. The pathway of open graves, the huddled earth on either side, the seemingly heaven arranged above, the singing process to paradise on the one hand, the stuttering descent to hell on the other, completed and satisfied him. He did not care whether or not he believed in devils or angels. The whole conception gave him the deepest satisfaction, and he wanted nothing more. Accustomed to these pictures from her childhood, hunted out their detail. She adored Fra Angelico's flowers and light and angels. She liked the demons and enjoyed the hell. But the representation of the encircled god, surrounded by all the angels on high, suddenly bored her. The figure of the most high bored her and roused her resentment. Was this the culmination in the meaning of it all? This draped knoll figure? The angels were so lovely and the light so beautiful, and only for this, to surround such a banality for God? She was dissatisfied, but not fit as yet to criticize. There was yet so much to wander over. Winter came. Pine branches were torn down in the snow. The green pine needles looked rich upon the ground. There was the wonderful starry straight track of a pheasant's footsteps across the snow, and printed so clear. There was the lobbing mark of the rabbit, two holes abreast, two holes following behind. The hair shoved deeper shafts. Slanting in his two hind feet came down together and made one large pit. The cat potted little holes, and birds made a lacy pattern. Gradually there gathered the feeling of expectation. Christmas was coming. In the shed at night a secret candle was burning. A sound of veiled voices was heard. The boys were learning the old mystery play of St. George and Beelzebub. Twice a week by lamp-light there was choir practice in the church for the learning of old carols Brangwood wanted to hear. The girls went to these practices. Everywhere was a sense of mystery and rousedness. Everybody was preparing for something. The time came near. The girls were decorating the church with cold fingers binding holly and fur and yew about the pillars, till a new spirit was in the church. The stone broke out into dark, rich leaf, the arches put forth their buds, and cold flowers rose to blossom in the dim, mystic atmosphere. Ursula must weave mistletoe over the door and over the screen, and hang a silver dove from a sprig of yew till dust came down and the church was like a grove. In the cowshed the boys were blacking their faces for a dress rehearsal. The turkey hung dead with open speckled wings in the dairy. The time was come to make pies in readiness. The expectation grew more tense. The star was risen into the sky. The songs, the carols, were ready to hail it. The star was the sign in the sky. Earth too should give a sign. As evening drew on, hearts beat fast with anticipation. Hands were full of ready gifts. There were the tremulously expectant words of the church service. The night was past and the morning was come. The gifts were given and received. Joy and peace made a flapping of wings in each heart. There was a great burst of carols. The peace of the world had dawned. Strife had passed away. Every hand was linked in hand. Every heart was singing. It was bitter, though, that Christmas day as it drew on to evening and night became a sort of bank holiday, flat and stale. The morning was so wonderful, but in the afternoon and evening the ecstasy perished like a nipped thing, like a bud in a false spring. Elastic Christmas was only a domestic feast, a feast of sweetmeats and toys. Why did not the grown-ups also change their everyday hearts and give way to ecstasy? Where was the ecstasy? How passionately the brandwins craved for it, the ecstasy. The father was troubled, dark-faced and disconsolate on Christmas night because the passion was not there. Because the day was become as every day, and hearts were not aflame. Upon the mother was a kind of absentness, as ever, as if she were exiled for all her life. Where was the fiery heart of joy, now the coming was fulfilled? Where was the star, the magi's transport, the thrill of new being that shook the earth? Still it was there, even if it were faint and inadequate. The cycle of creation still wheeled in the church year. After Christmas, the ecstasy slowly sank and changed. Sunday followed Sunday, trailing a fine movement, a finely developed transformation over the heart of the family, the heart that was big with joy that had seen the star and had followed to the inner walls of the nativity that there had swooned in the great light must now feel the light slowly withdrawing, a shadow falling, darkening. The chill crept in, silence came over the earth, and then all was darkness. The veil of the temple was rent, each heart gave up the ghost and sank dead. They moved quietly, a little oneness on the lips of the children, at Good Friday, feeling the shadow upon their hearts. Then pale, with a deathly scent, came the lilies of resurrection that shone coldly till the comforter was given. But why the memory of the wounds and the death? Surely Christ rose with healed hands and feet, sound and strong and glad. Surely the passage of the cross and the tomb was forgotten. But no, always the memory of the wounds, always the smell of grave clothes. A small thing was resurrection compared with the cross and the death in this cycle. So the children lived the year of Christianity, the epic of the soul of mankind. Year by year the inner unknown drama went on in them. Their hearts were born and came to fullness, suffered on the cross, gave up the ghost and rose again to unnumbered days, untired, having at least this rhythm of eternity and a ragged, inconsequential life. But it was becoming a mechanical action now, this drama. Birth at Christmas, for death at Good Friday. On Easter Sunday the life drama was as good as finished, for the resurrection was shadowy and overcome by the shadow of death. The ascension was scarce noticed, a mere confirmation of death. What was the hope and the fulfillment? Nay, was it all only a useless after-death, a wand, bodyless after-death, a last and a last for the passion of the human heart that must die so long before the body was dead? For from the grave, after the passion and the trial of anguish, the body rose, torn and chill and colorless. Did not Christ say, Mary, and when she turned without stretched hands to him, did he not hasten to add, March me not, for I am not yet ascended to my father? Then how could the hands rejoice, so the heart be glad, seeing themselves repulsed? A last for the resurrection of the dead body, a last for the wavering, glimmering appearance of the risen Christ, a last for the ascension into heaven, which is a shadow within death, a complete passing away. A last that so soon the drama is over, that life is ended at thirty-three, that the half of the year of the soul is cold and historyless. A last that a risen Christ has no place with us. A last that the memory of the passion of sorrow and death and the grave holds triumph over the pale fact of resurrection. But why? Why shall I not rise with my body whole and perfect, shining with strong life? Why, when Mary says Rabboni, shall I not take her in my arms and kiss her and hold her to my breast? Why is the risen body deadly and abhorrent with wounds? The resurrection is to life, not to death. Shall I not see those who have risen again walk here among men perfect in body and spirit, whole and glad in the flesh, living in the flesh, loving in the flesh, beginning children in the flesh, arrived at last to wholeness, perfect without scar or blemish, healthy without fear of ill health? Is this not the period of manhood and of joy and fulfillment after the resurrection? Who shall be shattered by death and the cross being risen? And who shall fear the mystic perfect flesh that belongs to heaven? Can I not then walk this earth in gladness, being risen from sorrow? Can I not eat with my brother happily and with joy kiss my beloved after my resurrection, celebrate my marriage in the flesh with feastings, go about my business eagerly in the joy of my fellows? Is heaven impatient for me and bitter against this earth that I should hurry off, or that I should linger pale and untouched? Is the flesh which was crucified become as poison to the crowds in the street, or is it as a strong gladness and hope to them as the first flower blossoming out of the earth's hummus? CHAPTER X As Ursula passed from girlhood towards womanhood gradually the cloud of self-responsibility gathered upon her. She became aware of herself, that she was a separate entity in the midst of an unseparated obscurity, that she must go somewhere, she must become something, and she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh, why must one grow up? Why must one inherit this heavy-numbing responsibility of living an undiscovered life, out of the nothingness and the undifferentiated mass to make something of herself? But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a direction, but wither, how take even one step, and yet how stand still? This was torment indeed to inherit the responsibility of one's own life. The religion which had been another world for her, a glorious sort of play world where she lived, climbing the tree with the short-statured man, walking shakily on the sea like the disciple, breaking the bread into five thousand portions like the Lord, giving a great picnic to five thousand people, now fell away from reality and became a tale, a myth, an illusion, which however much one might assert it to be true and historical fact one knew was not true, at least for this present-day life of ours. There could, within the limits of this life we know, be no feeding of the five thousand. The girl had come to the point where she held that that which one cannot experience in daily life is not true for oneself. So the old duality of life wherein there had been a weak day world of people and trains and duties and reports, and besides that a Sunday world of absolute truth and living mystery, of walking upon the waters and being blinded by the face of the Lord, of following the pillar of cloud across the desert and watching a bush that crackled yet did not burn away, this old unquestioned duality suddenly was found to be broken apart. The weak day world had triumphed over the Sunday world. The Sunday world was not real, or at least not actual, and one lived by action. Only the weak day world mattered. She herself, Ursula Brangwen, must know how to take the weak day life. Her body must be a weak day body held in the world's estimate. Her soul must have a weak day value known according to the world's knowledge. Well then, there was a weak day life to live of action and deeds, and so there was a necessity to choose one's action and one's deeds. One was responsible to the world for what one did. Nay, one was more than responsible to the world. One was responsible to oneself. There was some puzzling, tormenting residue of the Sunday world within her, some persistent Sunday self which insisted upon a relationship with the now shadowy vision world. How could one keep up a relationship with that which one denied? Her task was now to learn the weak day life. How to act, that was the question, wither to go, how to become oneself. One was not oneself, one was merely a half-stated question. How to become oneself? How to know the question and the answer of oneself? When one was merely an unfixed something, nothing, blowing about like the winds of heaven, undefined, unstated? She turned to the visions which had spoken fire-off words that ran along the blood like ripples of an unseen wind. She heard the words again. She denied the vision, for she must be a weak day person to whom visions were not true, and she demanded only the weak day meaning of the words. There were words spoken by the vision, and words must have a weak day meaning, since words were weak day stuff. Let them speak now. Let them bespeak themselves in weak day terms. The vision should translate itself into weak day terms. Sell all thou hast and give to the poor, she heard on Sunday morning, that was plain enough, plain enough for Monday morning too. As she went down the hill to the station, going to school she took the saying with her, sell all thou hast and give to the poor. Did she want to do that? Did she want to sell her pearl-backed brush and mirror, her silver candlestick, her pendant, her lovely little necklace, and go dressed in drab like the wearies, the unlovely uncombed wearies who were the poor to her? She did not. She walked this Monday morning on the verge of misery, for she did not want to do what was right, and she didn't want to do what the gospel said. She didn't want to be poor, really poor, the thought was a horror to her, to live like the wearies, so ugly to be at the mercy of everybody? Sell that thou hast and give to the poor, one could not do it in real life, how dreary and hopeless it made her. Nor could one turn the other cheek. Teresa slapped Ursula on the face, Ursula in a mood of Christian humility silently presented the other side of her face, which Teresa, in exasperation at the challenge, also hit, whereupon Ursula, with boiling heart, went meekly away. But anger and deep writhing shame tortured her, so she was not easy till she had again quarreled with Teresa and had almost shaken her sister's head off. That'll teach you, she said grimly, and she went away, un-Christian but clean. There was something unclean and degrading about this humble side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted to the other extreme. I hate the wearies, and I wish they were dead. Why does my father leave us in the lurch like this, making us be poor and insignificant? Why is he not more? If we had a father as he ought to be, he would be Earl William Brangwen, and I should be the lady Ursula. What right have I to be poor, crawling along the lane like vermin? If I had my rights I should be seated on horseback and a green riding-habit, and my groom would be behind me, and I should stop at the gates of the cottages and inquire of the cottage-woman who came out with a child in her arms, how did her husband who had hurt his foot, and I would pat the flaxen head of the child, stooping from my horse, and I would give her a shilling from my purse and order nursing food to be sent from the hall to the cottage. So she rode in her pride, and sometimes she dashed into flames to rescue a forgotten child, or she dived into the canal locks and supported a boy who was seized with cramp, or she swept up a toddling infant from the feet of a runaway horse. Always imaginatively, of course. But in the end there returned the poignant yearning from the Sunday world, as she went down in the morning from Cassete and saw Elkston smoking blue and tender upon its hill, then her heart surged with far-off words, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hand gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. The passion rose in her for Christ, for the gathering under the wings of security and warmth. But how did it apply to the weekday world? What could it mean but that Christ should clasp her to his breast as a mother clasps her child, and O, for Christ, for him who could hold her to his breast and lose her there, O, for the breast of man where she should have refuge and bliss forever, all her senses quivered with passionate yearning. Begley she knew that Christ meant something else, that in the vision world he spoke of Jerusalem, something that did not exist in the everyday world. It was not houses and factories he would hold in his bosom, nor householders, nor factory workers, nor poor people, but something that had no part in the weekday world, nor seen nor touched with weekday hands and eyes. And she must have it in weekday terms, she must, for all her life was a weekday life now. This was the whole. So he must gather her body to his breast that was strong with a broad bone and which sounded with the beating of the heart, and which was warm with the life of which she partook, the life of the running blood. So she craved for the breast of the Son of Man to lie there, and she was ashamed in her soul, ashamed. For whereas Christ spoke for the vision to answer, she answered from the weekday fact. It was a betrayal, a transference of meaning from the vision world to the matter of fact world. So she was ashamed of her religious ecstasy and dreaded lest anyone should see it. Early in the year when the lambs came and shelters were built of straw and on her uncle's farm the men sat at night with a lantern and a dog. Then again there swept over her this passionate confusion between the vision world and the weekday world. Again she felt Jesus in the countryside, ah, he would lift up the lambs in his arms, ah, and she was the lamb. Again in the morning, going down the lane, she heard the you-call, and the lambs came running, shaking and twinkling with newborn bliss, and she saw them stooping, nuzzling, groping to the udder to find the teats, whilst the mother turned her head gravely and sniffed her own, and they were sucking, vibrating with bliss on their little long legs, their throats stretched up, their new bodies quivering to the stream of blood-warm loving milk. Oh, and the bliss, the bliss, she could scarcely tear herself away to go to school, the little noses nuzzling at the udder, the little bodies so glad and sure, the little black legs crooked, the mother standing still, yielding herself to their quivering attraction, then the mother walked calmly away. Jesus, the vision world, the everyday world, all mixed inextricably in a confusion of pain and bliss, it was almost agony the confusion, the inextricability. Jesus, the vision speaking to her, who was non-visionary, and she would take his words of the spirit and make them to pander to her own carnality. This was a shame to her. The confusing of the spirit world with the material world in her own soul degraded her. She answered the call of the spirit in terms of immediate everyday desire. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It was the temporal answer she gave. She leapt with sensuous yearning to respond to Christ, if she could go to him really and lay her head on his breast, to have comfort, to be made much of, caressed like a child, all the time she walked in a confused heat of religious yearning. She wanted Jesus to love her deliciously, to take her sensuous offering, to give her sensuous response. For weeks she went in amuse of enjoyment. And all the time she knew underneath that she was playing false, accepting the passion of Jesus for her own physical satisfaction. But she was in such a daze, such a tangle, how could she get free? She hated herself. She wanted to trample on herself, destroy herself. How could one become free? She hated religion because it lent itself to her confusion. She abused everything. She wanted to become hard, indifferent, brutally callous to everything with just the immediate need, the immediate satisfaction. To have a yearning towards Jesus, only that she might use him to pander to her own soft sensation, use him as a means of reacting upon herself, maddened her in the end. There was, then, no Jesus, no sentimentality. With all the bitter hatred of helplessness she hated sentimentality. At this period came the young Skrebensky. She was nearly sixteen years old, a slim, smoldering girl, deeply reticent, yet lapsing into unreserved expansiveness now and then, when she seemed to give away her whole soul, but when in fact she only made another counterfeit of her soul for outward presentation. She was sensitive in the extreme, always tortured, always affecting a callous indifference to screen herself. She was at this time a nuisance on the face of the earth with her spasmodic passion and her slumberous torment. She seemed to go with all her soul in her hands, yearning to the other person, yet all the while, deep at the bottom of her, was a childish antagonism of distrust. She thought she loved everybody and believed in everybody, because she could not love herself nor believe in herself. She mistrusted everybody, with the mistrust of a serpent or a captured bird. Her starts of revulsion and hatred were more inevitable than her impulses of love. So she wrestled through her dark days of confusion, soulless, uncreated, unformed. One evening as she was studying in the parlor, her head buried in her hands, she heard new voices in the kitchen speaking, but once from its apathy her excitable spirit started and strained to listen. It seemed to crouch, to lurk under cover, tense, glaring forth unwilling to be seen. There were two strange men's voices, one soft and candid, veiled with soft candor, the other veiled with easy mobility, running quickly. Ursula sat quite tense, shocked out of her studies, lost. She listened all the time to the sound of the voices scarcely heeding the words. The first speaker was her uncle Tom. She knew the naive candor covering the girding and savage misery of his soul. Who was the other speaker? Whose voice ran on so easy, yet with an inflamed pulse? It seemed to hasten and urge her forward, that other voice. I remember you, the young man's voice was saying, I remember you from the first time I saw you, because of your dark eyes and fair face. Mrs. Brangwin laughed, shy and pleased. You were a curly-headed little lad, she said. Was I? Yes, I know. They were very proud of my curls. And a laugh ran to silence. You were a very well-mannered lad, I remember, said her father. Oh, did I ask you to stay the night? I always used to ask people to stay the night. I believe it was rather trying for my mother. There was a general laugh. Ursula rose. She had to go. At the click of the latch everybody looked round. The girl hung in the doorway, seized with a moment's fierce confusion. She was going to be good-looking. Now she had an attractive gawkiness, as she hung a moment, not knowing how to carry her shoulders. Her dark hair was tied behind. Her yellow-brown eyes shone without direction. And her, in the parlour, was the soft light of a lamp upon open books. A superficial readiness took her to her uncle Tom, who kissed her, greeting her with warmth, making a show of intimate possession of her, and at the same time leaving evident his own complete detachment. But she wanted to turn to the stranger. He was standing back a little, waiting. He was a young man with very clear grayish eyes that waited until they were called upon before they took expression. Something in his self-possessed waiting moved her. And she broke into a confused, rather beautiful laugh as she gave him her hand, catching her breath like an excited child. His hand closed over hers very close, very near. He bowed, and his eyes were watching her with some attention. She felt proud. Her spirit leapt to life. You don't know, Mr. Skrebensky Ursula, came her uncle Tom's intimate voice. She lifted her face with an impulsive flash to the stranger, as if to declare a knowledge, laughing her palpitating excited laugh. His eyes became confused with roused lights. His detached attention changed to a readiness for her. He was a young man of twenty-one, with a slender figure and soft brown hair brushed up on the German fashion straight from his brow. Are you staying long? She asked. I've got a month's leave, he said, glancing at Tom Brangwen. But I have various places I must go to. Put in some time here and there. He brought her a strong sense of the outer world. It was as if she were set on a hill and could feel vaguely the whole world lying spread before her. What have you a month's leave from, she asked. I'm in the engineers in the army. Oh, she exclaimed, glad. We're taking you away from your studies, said her uncle Tom. Oh, no, she replied quickly. Skrubensky laughed, young and inflammable. She won't wait to be taken away, said her father. But that seemed clumsy. She wished he would leave her to say her own things. Don't you like study, asked Skrubensky, turning to her, putting the question from his own case? I like some things, said Ursula. I like Latin and French and grammar. He watched her, and all his beings seemed attentive to her. Then he shook his head. I don't, he said. They say all the brains of the army are in the engineers. I think that's why I joined them to get the credit of other people's brains. He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she became alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains or not, he was interesting. His directness attracted her. His independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his life over against hers. I don't think brains matter, she said. What does matter, then, came her uncle Tom's intimate, caressing, half-jeering voice. She turned to him. It matters whether people have courage or not, she said. Courage for what, asked her uncle? For everything. Tom Brangwin gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father sat silent with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was speaking for him. Everything's nothing, laughed her uncle. She disliked him at that moment. She doesn't practice what she preaches, said her father, stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. She has courage for mighty little. But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still waiting. His face was irregular. Almost ugly, flat-ish, with a rather thick nose. But his eyes were pelucid, strangely clear. His brown hair was soft and thick as silk. He had a slight mustache. His skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her uncle Tom looked full-blown. Her father seemed uncouth. Yet he reminded her of her father. Only he was finer, and he seemed to be shining. And his face was almost ugly. He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own being, as if he were beyond any change or question. He was himself. There was a sense of fatality about him that fascinated her. He made no effort to prove himself to other people. Let it be accepted for what it was, his own being. In its isolation, it made no excuse or explanation for itself. So he seemed perfectly even fatally established. He did not ask to be rendered before he could exist, before he could have relationship with another person. This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to unsure people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her uncle Tom was always, more or less, what the other person would have him. In consequence, one never knew the real uncle Tom. Only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux, with a more or less consistent appearance. But let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself entirely. He betrayed himself always upon his own responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was irrevocable in his isolation. So Ursula thought him wonderful. He was so finely constituted and so distinct, self-contained, self-supporting. This, she said to herself, was a gentleman. He had a nature like fate, the nature of an aristocrat. She laid hold of him at once for her dreams. Here was one such as those sons of God who saw the daughters of men that they were fair. He was no son of Adam. Adam was Servile. Had not Adam been driven cringing out of his native place, had not the human race been a beggar ever since, seeking its own being. But Anton Skrebensky could not beg. He was in possession of himself, of that and no more. Other people could not really give him anything nor take anything from him. His soul stood alone. She knew that her mother and father acknowledged him. The house was changed. There had been a visit paid to the house. Once three angels stood in Abraham's doorway and greeted him, and stayed and ate with him, leaving his household enriched for ever when they went. The next day she went down to the marsh according to invitation. The two men were not come home. Then looking through the window, she saw the dog cart drive up, and Skrebensky leapt down. She saw him draw himself together, jump, laugh to her uncle who was driving, then come towards her to the house. He was so spontaneous and revealed in his movements. He was isolated within his own clear, fine atmosphere, and as still as if faded. His resting in his own fate gave him an appearance of indolence, almost of langer. He made no exuberant movement. When he sat down he seemed to go loose, languid. We are a little late, he said. Where have you been? We went to Derby to see a friend of my father's. Who? It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man. Well, he is a clergyman too. He is my guardian, one of them. Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan. Where is really your home now? She asked. My home? I wonder. I am very fond of my Colonel, Colonel Hepburn. Then there are my aunts, but my real home I suppose is the army. Do you like being on your own? His clear greenish gray eyes rested on her a moment, and as he considered he did not see her. I suppose so, he said. You see, my father, well, he was never acclimated here. He wanted, I don't know what he wanted, but it was a strain. And my mother, I always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being too good to me, my mother. Then I went away to school so early, and I must say the outside world was always more naturally a home to me than the vicarage. I don't know why. Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude, she asked, using a phrase she had met? No, no. I find everything very much as I like it. He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. It drew her, as a scent draws a bee from afar, but also it hurt her. It was summer and she wore cotton frocks. The third time he saw her she had on a dress with fine blue and white stripes, with a white collar and a large white hat. It suited her gold and warm complexion. I like you best in that dress, he said, standing with his head slightly on one side and appreciating her in a perceiving critical fashion. She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she was in love with the vision of herself. She saw as it were a fine little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act up to this. She must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned swiftly to close. Her passion was to make a beautiful appearance. Her family looked on in amazement at the sudden transformation of Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, in figured cotton frocks she made for herself and hats she bent to her fancy, and inspiration was upon her. He sat with a sort of languor in her grandmother's rocking chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward as Ursula talked to him. You are not poor, are you? She said, poor and money? I have about a hundred and fifty a year of my own, so I am poor or rich as you like. I am poor enough, in fact. But will you earn money? I shall have my pay. I have my pay now. I've got my commission. That is another hundred and fifty. You will have more, though. I shan't have more than two hundred pounds a year for ten years to come. I shall always be poor if I have to live on my pay. Do you mind it? Being poor? Not now, not very much. I may later. People, the offices are good to me. Colonel Hepburn has a sort of fancy for me. He is a rich man, I suppose. A chill went over Ursula. Was he going to sell himself in some way? Has Colonel Hepburn married? Yes, with two daughters. But she was too proud at once to care whether Colonel Hepburn's daughter wanted to marry him or not. There came a silence. Goodwin entered, and Skrebensky still rocked languidly on the chair. You look very lazy, said Goodwin. I am lazy, he answered. You look really floppy, she said. I am floppy, he answered. Can't you stop, I asked Goodwin? No, it's the perpetual mobile. You look as if you had a bone in your body. That's how I like to feel. I don't admire your taste. That's my misfortune, and he rocked on. Goodwin seated herself behind him, and as he rocked back she caught his hair between her finger and thumb so that it tugged him as he swung forward again. He took no notice. There was only the sound of the rockers on the floor. In silence, like a crab, Goodwin caught a strand of his hair each time he rocked back. Ursula flushed and sat in some pain. She saw the irritation gathering on his brow. At last he leapt up suddenly like a steel spring going off and stood on the hearthrug. Damn it, why can't I rock? He asked petulently, fiercely. Ursula loved him for his sudden steel-like start out of the langer. He stood on the hearthrug fuming, his eyes gleaming with anger. Goodwin laughed in her deep mellow fashion. Men don't rock themselves, she said. Girls don't pull men's hair, he said. Goodwin laughed again. Ursula sat amused but waiting, and he knew Ursula was waiting for him. It roused his blood. He had to go to her to follow her call. End of Chapter 11, Part 1. Once he drove her to Darby in the dog cart, he belonged to the horse he set of the sappers. They had lunch in and in, and went through the market pleased with everything. He bought her a copy of Wuthering Heights from a bookstore. Then they found a little fair in progress, and she said, My father used to take me in the swing boats. Did you like it? He asked. Oh, it was fine, she said. Would you like to go now? Love it, she said, though she was afraid, but the prospect of doing an unusual, exciting thing was attractive to her. He went straight to the stand, paid the money, and helped her to mount. He seemed to ignore everything but just what he was doing. Other people were mere objects of indifference to him. She would have liked to hang back, but she was more ashamed to retreat from him than to expose herself to the crowd, or to dare the swing boat. His eyes laughed, and standing before her with his sharp, sudden figure, he set the boat swinging. She was not afraid, she was thrilled. His color flushed, his eyes shone with a roused light, and she looked up at him, her face like a flower in the sun, so bright and attractive. So they rushed through the bright air, up at the sky as if flung from a catapult, then falling terribly back. She loved it. The motion seemed to fan their blood to fire. They laughed, feeling the flames. After the swing boats, they went on the roundabouts to calm down. He, twisting a stride on his jerky wooden steed towards her, and always seeming at his ease, enjoying himself. A zest of antagonism to the convention made him fully himself. As they sat on the whirling carousel with the music grinding out, she was aware of the people on the earth outside, and it seemed that he and she were riding carelessly over the faces of the crowd, riding forever buoyantly, proudly, gallantly over the upturned faces of the crowd, moving on a high level, spurning the common mass. When they must descend and walk away, she was unhappy, feeling like a giant suddenly cut down to ordinary level at the mercy of the mob. They left the fair to return for the dog cart. Passing the large church, Ursula must look in, but the whole interior was filled with scaffolding, fallen stone, and rubbish were heaped on the floor, bits of plaster crunched underfoot, and the place re-echoed to the calling of secular voices and to blows of the hammer. She had come to plunge in the utter gloom and peace for a moment, bringing all her yearning that had returned on her uncontrolled after the reckless riding over the face of the crowd in the fair. After pride she wanted comfort solace, for pride and scorn seemed to hurt her most of all. And she found the immemorial gloom full of bits of falling plaster and dust of floating plaster, smelling of old lime, having scaffolding and rubbish heaped about dust claws over the altar. "'Let us sit down a minute,' she said. They sat unnoticed in the back pew in the gloom, and she watched the dirty disorderly work of bricklayers and plasterers, workmen in heavy boots, walking grinding down the aisles, calling out in a vulgar accent, "'Hi, mate, has them corner-moldens come?' There were shouts of course answered from the roof of the church. The place echoed desolate. Skrebensky sat close to her. Everything seemed wonderful, if dreadful to her. The world tumbling into ruins, and she and he clamoring unhurt, lawless over the face of it all. He sat close to her, touching her, and she was aware of his influence upon her. But she was glad. It excited her to feel the press of him upon her, as if his being were urging her to something. As they drove home he sat near to her, and when he swayed to the cart he swayed in a voluptuous, lingering way against her, lingering as he swung away to recover balance. Without speaking he took her hand across, under the wrap, and with his unseeing face lifted to the road, his sole intent he began, with his one hand, to unfasten the buttons of her glove, to push back her glove from her hand, carefully laying bare her hand. And the close working, instinctive subtlety of his fingers upon her hand sent the young girl mad with voluptuous delight. His hand was so wonderful, intent as a living creature stillfully pushing and manipulating in the dark underworld, removing her glove and laying bare her palm, her fingers. Then his hand closed over hers, so firm, so close, as if the flesh knitted to one thing, his hand and hers. Meanwhile his face watched the road and the ears of the horse. He drove with steady attention through the villages, and she sat beside him, wrapped, glowing, blinded with a new light. Neither of them spoke. In outward attention they were entirely separate, but between them was the compact of his flesh with hers in the hand clasp. Then, in a strange voice, affecting nonchalance and superficiality, he said to her, Sitting in the church there reminded me of Ingram. Who was Ingram, she asked. She also affected calm superficiality, but she knew that something forbidden was coming. He is one of the other men with me down at Chatham, a subaltern but a year older than I am. And why did the church remind you of him? Well, he had a girl in Rochester, and they always sat in a particular corner in the cathedral for their love-making. How nice, she cried impulsively. They misunderstood each other. It had its disadvantages, though. The verger made a row about it. What a shame! Why shouldn't they sit in a cathedral? I suppose they all think it a profanity, except you and Ingram and the girl. I don't think it a profanity. I think it's right to make love in a cathedral. She said this almost defiantly, and despite of her own soul. She was silent. And was she nice? Who? Emily? Yes, she was rather nice. She was a milliner, and she wouldn't be seen in the streets with Ingram. It was rather sad, really, because the verger spied on them and got to know their names and then made a regular row. It was a common tale afterwards. What did she do? She went to London into a big shop. Ingram still goes up to see her. Does he love her? It's a year and a half he's been with her now. What was she like? Emily? Little, shy, violent sort of girl with nice eyebrows. Ursula meditated this. It seemed like real romance of the outer world. Do all men have lovers, she asked? Amazed at her own temerity, but her hand was still fastened with his, and his face still had the same unchanging fixity of outward calm. They're always mentioning some amazing fine woman or other and getting drunk to talk about her. Most of them dash up to London the moment they are free. What for? To some amazing fine woman or other. What sort of woman? Various. Her name changes pretty frequently as a rule. One of the fellows is a perfect maniac. He keeps a suitcase always ready, and the instant he is at liberty he bolts with it to the station and changes in the train. No matter who is in the carriage, off he whips his tunic and performs at least the top half of his toilet. Ursula quivered and wondered, why is he in such a hurry, she asked. Her throat was becoming hard and difficult. He's got a woman in his mind, I suppose. She was chilled, hardened, and yet this world of passions and lawlessness was fascinating to her. It seemed to her a splendid recklessness. Her adventure in life was beginning. It seemed very splendid. That evening she stayed at the marsh till after dark, and Skrubensky escorted her home, for she could not go away from him. And she was waiting, waiting for something more. In the warm of the early night, with the shadows new about them, she felt in another, harder, more beautiful, less personal world. Now a new state should come to pass. She walked near to her and with the same silent intent approach put his arm round her waist, and softly, very softly, drew her to him, till his arm was hard and pressed in upon her. She seemed to be carried along, floating, her feet scarce touching the ground, born upon the firm, moving surface of his body, upon whose side she seemed to lie in a delicious swoon of motion. And whilst she swooned, his face bent nearer to her, her head was leaned on his shoulder, she felt his warm breath on her face. Then softly, oh, softly, so softly that she seemed to faint away, his lips touched her cheek, and she drifted through strands of heat and darkness. Still she waited, in her swoon and her drifting, waited like the sleeping beauty in the story. She waited, and again his face was bent to hers. His lips came warm to her face, their footsteps lingered and ceased. They stood still, under the trees, whilst his lips waited on her face, waited like a butterfly that does not move on a flower. She pressed her breast a little nearer to him. He moved, put both his arms round her, and drew her close. And then, in the darkness, he bent to her mouth softly and touched her mouth with his mouth. She was afraid. She lay still on his arm, feeling his lips on her lips. She kept still, helpless. Then his mouth drew nearer, pressing open her mouth. A hot, drenching surge rose within her. She opened her lips to him. In pain poignant eddies she drew him nearer. She let him come farther. His lips came, and surging, surging, soft, oh, soft, yet oh, like the powerful surge of water, irresistible, till with a little blind cry she broke away. She heard him breathing heavily, strangely beside her. A terrible and magnificent sense of his strangeness possessed her, but she shrank a little now within herself. Hesitating they continued to walk on, quivering like shadows under the ash trees of the hill, where her grandfather had walked with his daffodils to make his proposal, and where her mother had gone with her young husband, walking close upon him, as Ursula was now walking upon Skrubensky. Ursula was aware of the dark limbs of the trees stretching overhead, clothed with leaves, and of fine ash leaves, tressing the summer night. They walked with their bodies moving in complex unity, close together. She held her hand, and they went the long way round by the road to be farther. Always she felt as if she were supported off her feet, as if her feet were light as little breezes in motion. He would kiss her again, but not again that night with the same deep-reaching kiss. She was aware now, aware of what a kiss might be, and so it was more difficult to come to him. She went to bed feeling all warm with electric warmth, as if the gush of dawn were within her upholding her, and she slept deeply, sweetly, oh so sweetly. In the morning she felt sound as an ear of wheat, fragrant and firm and full. They continued to be lovers in the first wondering state of unrealization. Ursula told nobody. She was entirely lost in her own world. But some strange affectation made her seek for a spurious confidence. She had at school a quiet, meditative, serious-sold friend called Ethel, and to Ethel must Ursula confide the story. Ethel listened absorbantly with bowed, unbetraying head, whilst Ursula told her secret. Oh, it was so lovely, his gentle, delicate way of making love. Ursula talked like a practiced lover. Do you think, asked Ursula, it is wicked to let a man kiss you, real kisses not flirting? I should think, said Ethel, it depends. He kissed me under the ash trees on Cassate Hill, do you think it was wrong? When? On Thursday night when he was seeing me home, but real kisses, real. He is an officer in the army. What time was it, asked the deliberate Ethel. I don't know, about half past nine? There was a pause. I think it's wrong, said Ethel, lifting her head with impatience. You don't know him. She spoke with some contempt. Yes, I do. He is half a pole, and a baron, too. England he is equivalent to a lord. My grandmother was his father's friend. But the two friends were hostile. It was as if Ursula wanted to divide herself from her acquaintances in asserting her connection with Anton, as she now called him. He came a good deal to Cassate, because her mother was fond of him. Anna Branglund became something of a grand dame with Grubensky, very calm, taking things for granted. Aren't the children in bed, cried Ursula, petulately, as she came in with the young man? They will be in bed in half an hour, said the mother. There is no peace, cried Ursula. The children must live, Ursula, said her mother. And Grubensky was against Ursula in this. Why should she be so insistent? But then, as Ursula knew, he did not have the perpetual tyranny of young children about him. He treated her mother with great courtliness, to which Mrs. Branglund returned an easy, friendly hospitality. Something pleased the girl in her mother's calm assumption of state. It seemed impossible to abate Mrs. Branglund's position. She could never be beneath anyone in public relation. Between Branglund and Grubensky there was an unbridgeable silence. Sometimes the two men made a slight conversation, but there was no interchange. Ursula rejoiced to see her father retreating into himself against the young man. She was proud of Grubensky in the house. His lounging, languorous indifference irritated her, and yet cast a spell over her. She knew it was the outcome of the spirit of laissez-à-l'et, combined with profound young vitality, yet it irritated her deeply. Notwithstanding she was proud of him as he lounged in his lambent fashion in her home. He was so attentive and courteous to her mother and to herself all the time. It was wonderful to have his awareness in the room. She felt rich and augmented by it, as if she were the positive attraction and he the flow towards her. And his courtesy and his agreement might be all her mother's, but the lambent flicker of his body was for herself. She held it. She must ever prove her power. I meant to show you my little wood carving, she said. I'm sure it's not worth showing that, said her father. Would you like to see it? She asked, leaning towards the door. And his body had risen from the chair, though his face seemed to want to agree with her parents. It is in the shed, she said. And he followed her out of the door, whatever his feelings might be. In the shed they played at kisses, really played at kisses. It was a delicious, exciting game. She turned to him, her face all laughing like a challenge, and he accepted the challenge at once. He twined his hand full of her hair, and gently with his hand wrapped around with hair behind her head, gradually brought her face nearer to his whilst she left breathless with challenge, and his eyes gleamed with answer, with enjoyment of the game. And he kissed her, asserting his will over her, and she kissed him back, asserting her deliberate enjoyment of him. Daring and reckless and dangerous they knew it was their game, each playing with fire, not with love. A sort of defiance of all the world possessed her in it. She would kiss him just because she wanted to. And a daredevilry in him, like a cynicism, a cut at everything he pretended to serve, retaliated in him. She was very beautiful then, so wide-opened, so radiant, so palpitating, exquisitely vulnerable, and poignantly wrongly throwing herself to risk. It roused a sort of madness in him. Like a flower shaking and wide opened in the sun, she tempted him and challenged him. And he accepted the challenge. Something went fixed in him. And under all her laughing poignant recklessness was the quiver of tears that almost sent him mad, mad with desire, with pain, whose only issue was through possession of her body. So shaken, afraid, they went back to her parents in the kitchen and dissimulated, but something was roused in both of them that they could not now allay. It intensified and heightened their senses. They were more vivid and powerful in their being. But under it all was a poignant sense of transience. It was a magnificent self-assertion on the part of both of them. He asserted himself before her. He felt himself infinitely male and infinitely irresistible. She asserted herself before him. She knew herself infinitely desirable, and hence infinitely strong. And after all, what could either of them get from such a passion but a sense of his or her own maximum self in counter-distinction to all the rest of life, wherein was something finite and sad for the human soul at its maximum, once a sense of the infinite? Nevertheless, it was begun now, this passion, and must go on. The passion of Ursula to know her own maximum self limited and so defined against him. She could limit and define herself against him the male. She could be her maximum self, female, o'female, triumphant for one moment in exquisite assertion against the male, in supreme counter-distinction to the male. The next afternoon when he came, prowling, she went with him across to the church. Her father was gradually gathering in anger against him. Her mother was hardening in anger against her. But the parents were naturally tolerant in action. They went together across the churchyard, Ursula and Skrebensky, and ran to hiding in the church. It was dimmer in there than the sunny afternoon outside, but the mellow glow among the bowed stone was very sweet. The windows burned in ruby and in blue. They made magnificent eras to their bower of secret stone. What a perfect place for a rendezvous, he said in a hushed voice, glancing round. She too glanced round the familiar interior. The dimness and stillness chilled her, but her eyes lit up with daring. Here, here she would assert her indomitable, gorgeous female self. Here, here she would open her female flower like a flame in this dimness that was more passionate than light. She hung apart a moment, then willfully turned to each other for the desired contact. She put her arms round him. She cleaved her body to his, and with her hands pressed upon his shoulders, on his back, she seemed to feel right through him. To know his young tense body right through. And it was so fine, so hard, yet so exquisitely subject, and under her control. She reached him her mouth and drank his full kiss, drank it fuller and fuller. And it was so good, it was very, very good. She seemed to be filled with his kiss, filled as if she had drunk strong, glowing sunshine. She glowed all inside. The sunshine seemed to beat upon her heart underneath. She had drunk so beautifully. She drew away and looked at him, radiant, exquisitely glowingly beautiful, and satisfied, but radiant as an illumined cloud. To him this was bitter, but she was so radiant and satisfied. She laughed upon him, blind to him, so full of her own bliss, never doubting that he was the same as she was. And radiant as an angel, she went with him out of the church, as if her feet were beams of light that walked on flowers for footsteps. He went beside her, his soul clenched, his body unsatisfied. Was she going to make this easy triumph over him? For him there was now no self-bliss, only pain and confused anger. It was high summer, and the hay harvest was almost over. It would be finished on Saturday. On Saturday, however, Skrebensky was going away. He could not stay any longer. Having decided to go, he became very tender and loving to her, kissing her gently with such soft, sweet, insidious closeness that they were both of them intoxicated. The very last Friday of his stay, he met her coming out of school and took her to tea in the town. Then he had a motor-car to drive her home. Her excitement at riding in a motor-car was greatest of all. He too was very proud of this last two. He saw Ursula kindle and flare up to the romance of the situation. She raised her head like a young horse, snuffing with wild delight. The car swerved round a corner, and Ursula was swung against Skrebensky. The contact made her aware of him. With a swift foraging impulse, she sought for his hand and clasped it in her own, so close, so combined as if they were two children. The wind blew in on Ursula's face. The mud flew in a soft, wild rush from the wheels. The country was blackish-green with the silver of new hay here and there, and masses of trees under a silver-gleaming sky. Her hand tightened on his with a new consciousness, troubled. They did not speak for some time, but sat hand-fast with averted shining faces, and every now and then the car swung her against him, and they waited for the motion to bring them together, yet they stared out of the windows, mute. She saw the familiar country racing by, but now it was no familiar country, it was Wonderland. There was the hemlock stone standing on its grassy hill, strange it looked on this wet early summer evening, remote in a magic land. Some rooks were flying out of the trees. Ah, if only she and Skrebensky could get out, dismount into this enchanted land where nobody had ever been before, then they would be enchanted people, they would put off the dull customary self. If she were wandering there on that hill-slope under a silvery changing sky in which many rooks melted like hurrying showers of blots, if they could walk past the wetted hay-swads, smelling the early evening and pass into the wood where the honeysuckle scent was sweet on the cold tang in the air, and showers of drops fell when one brushed a bow, cold and lovely on the face, but she was here with him in the car, close to him, and the wind was rushing on her lifted eager face, blowing back the hair. He turned and looked at her, at her face clean as a chiseled thing, her hair chiseled back by the wind, her fine nose keen and lifted. It was agony to him, seeing her swift and clean cut and virgin. He wanted to kill himself and throw his detested carcass at her feet. His desire to turn round on himself and rend himself was an agony to him. Suddenly she glanced at him. He seemed to be crouching towards her, reaching. He seemed to wince between the brows, but instantly, seeing her lighted eyes and radiant face, his expression changed. His old reckless laugh shone to her. She pressed his hand in utter delight, and he abided. And suddenly she stooped and kissed his hand, bent her head and caught it to her mouth, in generous homage, and the blood burned in him, yet he remained still. He made no move. She started. There were swinging into Kostate. Scrivensky was going to leave her, but it was all so magic. Her cup was so full of bright wine, her eyes could only shine. He tapped and spoke to the man. The cars swung up by the yew trees. She gave him her hand and said goodbye, naive and brief as a schoolgirl, and she stood watching him go, her face shining. The fact of his driving on meant nothing to her. She was so filled by her own bright ecstasy. She did not see him go, for she was filled with light which was of him. Bright, with an amazing light as she was, how could she miss him? In her bedroom she threw her arms in the air in clear pain of magnificence. Oh, it was her transfiguration. She was beyond herself. She wanted to fling herself into all the hidden brightness of the air. It was there. It was there if she could but meet it. CHAPTER 11 PART 3 But the next day she knew he had gone. Her glory had partly died down, but never from her memory. It was too real. Yet it was gone by, leaving a wistfulness. A deeper yearning came into her soul, a new reserve. She shrank from touch and question. She was very proud, but very new and very sensitive. Oh, that no one should lay hands on her. She was happier running on by herself. Oh, it was a joy to run along the lanes without seeing things yet being with them. It was such a joy to be alone with all one's riches. The holidays came when she was free. She spent most of her time running on by herself, curled up in a squirrel place in the garden, lying in a hammock in the coppers, while the birds came near, near, so near. Oh, in rainy weather she flitted to the marsh and lay hidden with her book in a hay loft. All the time she dreamed of him, sometimes definitely, but when she was happiest only vaguely. He was the warm coloring of her dreams. He was the hot blood beating within them. When she was less happy, out of sorts, she pondered over his appearance, his clothes, the buttons with his regimental badge which he had given her. Or she tried to imagine his life in barracks. Or she conjured up a vision of herself as she appeared in his eyes. His birthday was in August and she spent some pains on making him a cake. She felt that it would not be in good taste for her to give him a present. Their correspondence was brief, mostly in exchange of postcards, not at all frequent, but with her cake she must send him a letter. Dear Anton, the sunshine has come back specially for your birthday, I think. I made the cake myself and wish you many happy returns of the day. Don't eat it if it is not good. Mother hopes you will come and see us when you are near enough. I am your sincere friend, Ursula Brangwen. It bored her to write a letter, even to him. After all, writing words on paper had nothing to do with him and her. The fine weather had set in. The cutting machine went on from dawn till sunset, chattering round the fields. She heard from Skrebensky. He too was on duty in the country, on Salisbury Plain. He was now a second lieutenant in a field troop. He would have a few days off shortly and would come to the march for the wedding. Fred Brangwen was going to marry a schoolmistress out of Elkston as soon as Corn Harvest was at an end. The dim blue and gold of a hot sweet autumn saw the close of the Corn Harvest. To Ursula it was as if the world had opened its softest, purest flower, its chicory flower, its meadow saffron. The sky was blue and sweet. The yellow leaves down the lane seemed like free, wandering flowers as they chittered round the feet, making a keen, poignant, almost unbearable music to her heart. And the scents of autumn were like a summer madness to her. She fled away from the little purple red button chrysanthemums like a frightened dryad. The bright yellow little chrysanthemums smelled so strong her feet seemed to dither in a drunken dance. Then her uncle Tom appeared, always like the cynical Bacchus in the picture. He would have a jolly wedding, a harvest supper, and a wedding feast in one, a tent in the home close, and a band for dancing, and a great feast out of doors. Fred demured, but Tom must be satisfied. Also Laura, a handsome clever girl, the bride, she also must have a great and jolly feast. It appealed to her educated sense. She had been to Salisbury Training College, knew folk songs, and more of dancing. So the preparations were begun, directed by Tom Brangwin. A marquee was set up on the home close. Two large bonfires were prepared. Musicians were hired, feast made ready. Skrebensky was to come, arriving in the morning. Ursula had a new white dress of soft crate and a white hat. She liked to wear white. With her black hair and clear golden skin she looked southern, or rather tropical like a creole. She wore no color whatsoever. She trembled that day as she appeared to go down to the wedding. She was to be a bridesmaid. Skrebensky would not arrive till afternoon. The wedding was at two o'clock. As the wedding party returned home, Skrebensky stood in the parlor at the marsh. Through the window he saw Tom Brangwin, who was vest man, coming up the garden path most elegant in cutaway coat and white slip and spat, with Ursula laughing on his arm. Tom Brangwin was handsome with his womanish coloring and dark eyes and black close cut mustache, but there was something subtly coarse and suggestive about him for all his beauty. His strange bestial nostrils opened so hard and wide, and his well-shaped head almost disquieting in its nakedness, rather bald from the front, and all its soft fullness betrayed. Skrebensky saw the man rather than the woman. She saw only the slender, unchangeable youth wading there inscrutable like her fate. He was beyond her with his loose, slightly horsey appearance that made him seem very manly and foreign, yet his face was smooth and soft and impressionable. She shook hands with him, and her voice was like the rousing of a bird startled by the dawn. Isn't it nice, she cried, to have a wedding? There were bits of colored confetti lodged on her dark hair. Again the confusion came over him, as if he were losing himself and becoming all vague, undefined in co-eight. Yet he wanted to be hard, manly, horsey, and he followed her. There was a light tea and the guests scattered. The real feast was for the evening. Ursula walked out with Skrebensky through the stackyard to the fields and up the embankment to the canal side. The new corn stacks were big and golden as they went by. An army of white geese marched aside in braggart protest. Ursula was light as a white ball of down. Skrebensky drifted beside her, indefinite. His old form loosened, and another self, gray, vague, drifting out as from a bud. They talked lightly of nothing. The blue way of the canal wound softly between the autumn hedges on towards the greenness of a small hill. On the left was the whole black agitation of colliery and railway, and the town which rose on its hill, the church tower topping all. The round white dot of the clock on the tower was distinct in the evening light. That way Ursula felt was the way to London, through the grim alluring sea of the town. On the other hand was the evening. Mellow over the green water meadows and the winding alder trees beside the river and the pale stretches of stubble beyond. There the evening glowed softly and even a pee-wit was flapping in solitude and peace. Ursula and Anton Skrebensky walked along the ridge of the canal between. The berries on the hedges were crimson and bright red above the leaves. The glow of evening and the wheeling of the solitary pee-wit and the faint cry of the birds came to meet the shuffling noise of the pits, the dark fuming stress of the town opposite, and they too walked the blue strip of waterway, the ribbon of sky between. He was looking, Ursula thought, very beautiful, because of a flush of sunburn on his hands and face. He was telling her how he had learned to shoe horses and select cattle fit for killing. Do you like to be a soldier? she asked. I am not exactly a soldier, he replied. But you only do things for wars, she said. Yes. Would you like to go to war? I? Well, it would be exciting if there were a war I would want to go. A strange distracted feeling came over her, a sense of potent unrealities. Why would you want to go? I should be doing something. It would be genuine. It's a sort of toy life, as it is. But what would you be doing if you went to war? I would be making railways or bridges, working like a nigger. But you'd only make them to be pulled down again when the armies had done with them. It seems just as much a game. If you call war a game, what is it? It's about the most serious business there is fighting, a sense of hard separateness came over her. Why is fighting more serious than anything else? she asked. You either kill or get killed, and I suppose it is serious enough, killing. But when you're dead you don't matter anymore, she said. He was silenced for a moment. But the result matters, he said. It matters whether we settle to Mady or not. Not to you, nor me. We don't care about cartoom. You want to have room to live in and somebody has to make room. But I don't want to live in the desert of Sahara, do you, she replied, laughing with antagonism? I don't, but we've got to back up those who do. Why have we? Where is the nation if we don't? But we aren't the nation. There are heaps of other people who are the nation. They might say they weren't either. Well, if everybody said if there wouldn't be a nation, but I should still be myself, she asserted brilliantly. You wouldn't be yourself if there were no nation. Why not? Because you'd just be a prey to everybody and anybody. How will prey? They'd come and take everything you'd got. Well, they couldn't take much even then. I don't care what they take. I'd rather have a robber who carried me off than a millionaire who gave me everything you can buy. That's because you are a romanticist. Yes, I am. I want to be romantic. I hate houses that never go away and people just living in the houses. It's also stiff and stupid. I hate soldiers. They're stiff and wooden. What do you fight for, really? I would fight for the nation. For all that, you aren't the nation. What would you do for yourself? I belong to the nation and must do my duty by the nation. But when it didn't need your services in particular, when there is no fighting, what would you do then? He was irritated. I would do what everybody else does. What? Nothing. I would be in readiness for when I was needed. The answer came in exasperation. It seems to me, she answered, as if you weren't anybody. As if there weren't anybody there where you are. Are you anybody, really? You'd seem like nothing to me. They had walked till they had reached a wharf, just above a lock. There, an empty barge painted with a red and yellow cabin hood, but with a long, cold black hold, was lying moored. A man, lean and grimy, was sitting on a box against the cabin side by the door, smoking and nursing a baby that was wrapped in a drab shawl and looking into the glow of evening. A woman bustled out, sent a pale dashing into the canal, drew her water and bustled in again. Children's voices were heard. A thin blue smoke ascended from the cabin chimney. There was a smell of cooking. Ursula, white as a moth, lingered to look. Skrebensky lingered by her. The man glanced up. Good evening, he called. Half impudent, half attracted. He had blue eyes which glanced impudently from his grimy face. Good evening, said Ursula, delighted. Isn't it nice now? Eh, said the man, very nice. His mouth was red under his ragged sandy mustache. His teeth were white as he laughed. Oh, but stammered Ursula, laughing. It is. Why do you say it as if it weren't? Appen for them as his child nurse and it's none so rosy. May I look inside your barge? asked Ursula. There's nobody'll stop you. You come if you like. The barge lay at the opposite bank at the wharf. It was the Annabelle belonging to J. Ruth of Lauburl. The man watched Ursula closely from his keen, twinkling eyes. His fair hair was wispy on his grime forehead. Two dirty children appeared to see who was talking. Ursula glanced at the great locked gates. They were shut, and the water was sounding, spurting and trickling down in the gloom beyond. On this side the bright water was almost to the top of the gate. She went boldly across and round to the wharf. Stooping from the bank she peeped into the cabin where was a red glow of fire and the shadowy figure of a woman. She did want to go down. You'll mess your frocks, said the man, warningly. I'll be careful. She answered. May I come? Hey, come if you like. She gathered her skirts, lowered her foot to the side of the boat, and leapt down, laughing. Cold dust flew up. The woman came to the door. She was plump and sandy-haired, young with an odd stubby nose. Oh, you will make a mess of yourself, she cried, surprised and laughing with a little wonder. I did want to see. Isn't it lovely living on a barge, asked Ursula? I don't live on one all together, said the woman cheerfully. She's got her parlor and her plush suite in Lauberrow, said her husband, with just pride. Ursula peeped into the cabin where saucepans were boiling and some dishes were on the table. It was very hot. Then she came out again. The man was talking to the baby. It was a blue-eyed, fresh-faced thing with floss of red-gold hair. Is it a boy or a girl? she asked. It's a girl. Aren't you a girl, eh? He shouted at the infant shaking his head. Its little face wrinkled up into the oddest, funniest smile. Oh, cried Ursula. Oh, the dear. Oh, how nice when she laughs. She'll laugh hard enough, said the father. What is her name? asked Ursula. She hasn't got a name. She's not worth one, said the man. Are you? You fag-ended nothing. He shouted to the baby. The baby laughed. No, we've been that busy. We never took her to the registry office. Came the woman's voice. She was born on the boat here. But you know what you're going to call her? asked Ursula. We did think of Gladys Emily, said the mother. We thought of now to the sword, said the father. Hark at him. What do you want? Cried the mother in exasperation. She'll be called Annabelle after the boat she was born on. She's not so there, said the mother, viciously defiant. The father said in humorous malice grinning. Well, you'll see, he said. And Ursula could tell by the woman's vibrating exasperation that he would never give way. They're all nice names, she said. Call her Gladys Annabelle, Emily. Nay, that's heavy laden, if you like, he answered. You see, cried the woman, he's that pig-headed. And she's so nice, and she laughs, and she hasn't even got a name, crooned Ursula to the child. Let me hold her, she added. He yielded her the child at smelt of babies. But it had such blue wide china blue eyes, and it laughed so oddly. With such a taking grimace, Ursula loved it. She cooed and talked to it. It was such an odd, exciting child. What's your name? The man suddenly asked of her. My name is Ursula. Ursula Brangwen, she replied. Ursula, he exclaimed, dumbfounded. There was a saint Ursula. It's a very old name, she added hastily, in justification. Hey, mother, he called. There was no answer. Pem, he called. Can't you hear? What, came the short answer? What about Ursula, he grinned. What about what, came the answer, and the woman appeared in the doorway, ready for combat. Ursula, it's the lass's name there, he said gently. The woman looked the young girl up and down. Evidently she was attracted by her slim graceful new beauty, her effect of white elegance, and her tender way of holding the child. Why, how do you write it? the mother asked. Awkward, now she was touched. Ursula spelled out her name. The man looked at the woman. A bright, confused flush came over the mother's face, a sort of luminous shyness. It's not a common name, is it, she exclaimed, excited as by an adventure. Are you going to have it, then, he asked. I'd rather have it than Annabelle, she said decisively. And I'd rather have it than Gladys Emler, he replied. There was a silence. Ursula looked up. Will you really call her Ursula, she asked. Ursula Ruth replied the man, laughing vainly, as pleased as if he had found something. It was now Ursula's turn to be confused. It does sound awfully nice, she said. I must give her something, and I haven't got anything at all. She stood in her white dress wondering, down there in the barge. The lean man sitting near to her watched her as if she were a strange being, as if she lit up his face. His eyes smiled on her boldly, and yet with exceeding admiration underneath. Could I give her my necklace, she said. It was the little necklace made of pieces of amethyst and topaz and pearl and crystal, strung at intervals on a little golden chain which her uncle Tom had given her. She was very fond of it. She looked at it lovingly when she had taken it from her neck. Is it valuable? The man asked her, curiously. I think so, she replied. The stones and pearl are real. It is worth three or four pounds, said Skrubensky from the wharf above. Ursula could tell he disapproved of her. I must give it to your baby. May I? She said to the barge. He flushed and looked away into the evening. Nay, he said, it's not for me to say. What would your father and mother say? cried the woman curiously from the door. It is my own, said Ursula, and she dangled a little glittering string before the baby. The infant spread its little fingers, but it could not grasp. Ursula closed the tiny hand over the jewel. The baby waved the bright ends of the string. Ursula had given her necklace away. She felt sad, but she did not want it back. The jewel swung from the baby's hand and fell in a little heap on the cold dusty bottom of the barge. The man groped for it with a kind of careful reverence. Ursula noticed the coarsened, blunted fingers groping at the little jeweled heap. The skin was red on the back of the hand. The fair hairs glistened stiffly. It was a thin, sinewy capable hand, nevertheless, and Ursula liked it. He took up the necklace carefully and blew the cold dust from it as it lay in the hollow of his hand. He seemed still and attentive. He held out his hand with the necklace shining small in its hard black hollow. Take it back, he said. Ursula hardened with a kind of radiance. No, she said it belongs to little Ursula. And she went to the infant and fastened the necklace round its warm, soft, weak little neck. There was a moment of confusion. Then the father bent over his child. What do you say? He said. Do you say thank you? Do you say thank you, Ursula? Her name's Ursula now, said the mother, smiling a little bit ingratiatingly from the door, and she came out to examine the jewel on the child's neck. It is Ursula, isn't it? Said Ursula Brangwen. The father looked up at her with an intimate half-gallant, half-impudent, but wistful look. His captive soul loved her, but his soul was captive, he knew always. She wanted to go. He set a little ladder for her to climb up to the wharf. She kissed the child, which was in its mother's arms. Then she turned away. The mother was effusive. The man stood silent by the ladder. Ursula joined Skrebensky. The two young figures crossed the lock above the shining yellow water. The barge man watched them go. I loved them, she was saying. He was so gentle, oh, so gentle, and the baby was such a dear. Was he gentle, said Skrebensky? The woman had been a servant, I'm sure of that. Ursula winced. But I loved his impudence. It was so gentle underneath. She went hastening on, gladdened by having met the grimy lean man with the ragged mustache. He gave her a pleasant warm feeling. He made her feel the richness of her own life. Skrebensky somehow had created a deadness around her, a sterility as if the world were ashes. They said very little as they hastened home to the big supper. He was envying the lean father of three children for his impudent directness and his worship of the woman in Ursula, a worship of body and soul together, the man's body and soul, wistful and worshiping the body and spirit of the girl, with a desire that knew the inaccessibility of its object, but was only glad to know that the perfect thing existed, glad to have had a moment of communion. Why could not he himself desire a woman's soul? Why did he never really want a woman, not with the whole of him? Never loved, never worshiped, only just physically wanted her. But he would want her with his body, let his soul do as it would. A kind of flame of physical desire was gradually beating up in the marsh, kindled by Tom Brangwin and by the fact of the wedding of Fred, the shy, fair, stiff-set farmer with the handsome, half-educated girl. Tom Brangwin, with all his secret powers, seemed to fan the flame that was rising. The bride was strongly attracted by him, and he was exerting his influence on another beautiful figure. On another beautiful fair girl, chill and burning as the sea, who said witty things which he appreciated, making her glint with more like phosphorescence. And her greenish eyes seemed to rock a secret, and her hands, like mother of pearls, seemed luminous, transparent, as if the secret were burning visible in them. At the end of supper, during dessert, the music began to play, violins and flutes. Everybody's face was lit up. A glow of excitement prevailed. When the little speeches were over, and the port remained unreached for any more, those who wished were invited out to the open for coffee. The night was warm. Bright stars were shining. The moon was not yet up, and under the stars burned two great red, flameless fires, and round these lights in lantern's hung, the marquee stood open before a fire with its lights inside. The young people flocked out into the mysterious night. There was sound of laughter and voices and a scent of coffee. The farm buildings loomed dark in the background. Figures, pale and dark, flitted about intermingling. The red fire glinted on a white or a silken skirt. The lanterns gleamed on the transient heads of the wedding guests. To Ursula it was wonderful. She felt she was a new being. The darkness seemed to breathe like the sides of some great beast. The haystacks loomed half revealed, a crowd of them, a dark feck and de lair just behind. Waves of delirious darkness ran through her soul. She wanted to let go. She wanted to reach and be amongst the flashing stars. She wanted to race with her feet and be beyond the confines of this earth. She was mad to be gone. It was as if a hound were straining on the leash, ready to hurl itself after a nameless quarry into the dark. And she was the quarry. And she was also the hound. The darkness was passionate and breathing with immense unperceived heaving. It was waiting to receive her in her flight. And how could she start and how could she let go? She must leap from the known into the unknown. Her feet and hands beat like a madness. Her breasts strained as if in bonds. The music began and the bonds began to slip. Tom Brangwen was dancing with the bride, quick and fluid, and as if in another element, inaccessible as the creatures that move in the water. Fred Brangwen went in with another partner. The music came in waves. One couple after another was washed and absorbed into the deep underwater of the dance. Come, said Ursula Tyskrebensky, laying her hand on his arm. At the touch of her hand on his arm, his consciousness melted away from him. He took her into his arms as if into the sure, subtle power of his will, and they became one movement, one dual movement dancing on the slippery grass. It would be endless this movement. It would continue forever. It was his will and her will locked in a trance of motion, two wills locked in one motion, yet never fusing, never yielding one to the other. It was a glaucus, intertwining, delicious flux and contestant flux. They were both absorbed into a profound silence, into a deep fluid underwater energy that gave them unlimited strength. All the dancers were waving intertwined in the flux of music. Shadowy couples passed and repast before the fire. The dancing feet danced silently by into the darkness. It was a vision of the depths of the underworld under the great flood. There was a wonderful rocking of the darkness, slowly, a great slow swinging of the whole night with the music playing lightly on the surface, making the strange ecstatic rippling on the surface of the dance. But underneath only one great flood heaving slowly backwards to the birds of oblivion, slowly forward to the other verge, the heart sweeping along each time and tightening with anguish as the limit was reached and the movement at crises turned and swept back. As the dance surged heavily on, Ursula was aware of some influence looking in upon her. Something was looking at her. Some powerful glowing sight was looking right into her, not upon her, but right at her. Out of the great distance, yet imminent, the powerful overwhelming watch was kept upon her. And she danced on and on with Skrebensky, while the great white watching continued, balancing all in its revelation. The moon has risen, said Anton, as the music ceased, and they found themselves suddenly stranded, like bits of jetsam on a shore. She turned and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill, and her breast open to it. She was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts open to make way for it. Her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon. She wanted the moon to fill into her. She wanted more, more communion with the moon, consummation. But Skrebensky put his arm round her and led her away. He put a big, dark cloak round her and sat holding her hand, whilst the moonlight streamed above the glowing fires. She was not there. Presently she sat under the cloak, with Skrebensky holding her hand. But her naked self was away there, beating upon the moonlight, dashing the moonlight with her breasts and her knees, in meeting, in communion. She half started to go, in actuality, to fling away her clothing and flee away, away from this dark confusion and chaos of people to the hill and the moon. But the people stood round her like stones, like magnetic stones, and she could not go, in actuality. Skrebensky, like a lodestone, weighed on her. The weight of his presence detained her. She felt the burden of him, the blind, persistent, inert burden. He was inert, and he weighed upon her. She sighed in pain. O, for the coolness and entire liberty and brightness of the moon. O, for the cold liberty to be herself, to do entirely as she liked. She wanted to get right away. She felt like bright metal, weighted down by dark, impure magnetism. He was the dross. People were the dross. If she could but get away to the clean, free moonlight. Don't you like me tonight? Said his low voice, the voice of the shadow over her shoulder. She clenched her hands in the dewy brilliance of the moon, as if she were mad. Don't you like me tonight? Repeated the soft voice. And she knew that if she turned she would die. A strange rage filled her. A rage to tear things asunder. Her hands felt destructive, like metal blades of destruction. Let me alone, she said. A darkness, an obstinacy, settled on him, too, in a kind of inertia. He sat inert beside her. She threw off her cloak, and walked towards the moon, silver-white herself. He followed her closely. The music began again, and the dance. He appropriated her. There was a fierce white, cold passion in her heart, but he held her close and danced with her. Always present, like a soft weight upon her, bearing her down, was his body against her as they danced. He held her very close so that she could feel his body, the weight of him sinking, settling upon her, overcoming her life and energy, making her inert along with him. She felt his hands pressing behind her, upon her. But still in her body was this subdued, cold, indomitable passion. She liked the dance. It eased her, put her into a sort of trance, but it was only a kind of waiting, of using up the time that intervened between her and her pure being. She left herself against him. She let him exert all his power over her, to bear her down. She received all the force of his power. She even wished he might overcome her. She was cold and unmoved as a pillar of salt. His will was set and straining with all its tension to encompass him and compel her. If he could only compel her, he seemed to be annihilated. She was cold and hard and compact of brilliance as the moon itself, and beyond him as the moonlight was beyond him, never to be grasped or known. If he could only set a bond round her and compel her, so they danced, four or five dances, always together, always his will becoming more tense, his body more subtle playing upon her, and still he had not got her. She was hard and bright as ever, intact. But he must weave himself round her and close her, and close her in a net of shadow of darkness, so she would be like a bright creature gleaming in a net of shadows caught. Then he would have her. He would enjoy her. How he would enjoy her when she was caught. At last, when the dance was over, she would not sit down. She walked away. He came with his arm round her, keeping her upon the movement of his walking. And she seemed to agree. She was bright as a piece of moonlight, as bright as a steel blade. He seemed to be clasping a blade that hurt him, yet he would clasp her if it killed him. End of Chapter 11, Part 3