'Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked
Ursula. 'That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it ever
wanted it.' 'Yes it did. It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your
will to the higher being,' said Birkin.
'What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.
'And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside
her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the
other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.' 'Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.
'It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,'
said Birkin. 'The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.' 'Good thing too,' said Ursula.
'Quite,' said Gerald, with a faint smile. 'There's more fun.' Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song: 'Isn't the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great
sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.' Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last
impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful
arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking
of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.
'Wouldn't you like a dress,' said Ursula to Hermione, 'of this yellow
spotted with orange--a cotton dress?' 'Yes,' said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the
thought come home to her and soothe her. 'Wouldn't it be pretty? I
should LOVE it.' And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real affection.
But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to the bottom, to
know what he meant by the dual will in horses. A flicker of excitement
danced on Gerald's face.
Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden bond of
deep affection and closeness.
'I really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and analysis
of life. I really DO want to see things in their entirety, with their
beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their natural holiness. Don't
you feel it, don't you feel you CAN'T be tortured into any more
knowledge?' said Hermione, stopping in front of Ursula, and turning to
her with clenched fists thrust downwards.
'Yes,' said Ursula. 'I do. I am sick of all this poking and prying.' 'I'm so glad you are. Sometimes,' said Hermione, again stopping
arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula, 'sometimes I wonder if
I OUGHT to submit to all this realisation, if I am not being weak in
rejecting it. But I feel I CAN'T--I CAN'T. It seems to destroy
EVERYTHING. All the beauty and the--and the true holiness is
destroyed--and I feel I can't live without them.' 'And it would be simply wrong to live without them,' cried Ursula. 'No,
it is so IRREVERENT to think that everything must be realised in the
head. Really, something must be left to the Lord, there always is and
always will be.' 'Yes,' said Hermione, reassured like a child, 'it should, shouldn't it?
And Rupert--' she lifted her face to the sky, in a muse--'he CAN only
tear things to pieces. He really IS like a boy who must pull everything
to pieces to see how it is made. And I can't think it is right--it does
seem so irreverent, as you say.' 'Like tearing open a bud to see what the flower will be like,' said
Ursula.