'Yes,' cried Ursula. 'As if there were no-one but himself concerned.
That makes it so impossible.' But immediately she began to retract.
'He insists on my accepting God knows what in HIM,' she resumed. 'He
wants me to accept HIM as--as an absolute--But it seems to me he
doesn't want to GIVE anything. He doesn't want real warm intimacy--he
won't have it--he rejects it. He won't let me think, really, and he
won't let me FEEL--he hates feelings.' There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only he would have
made this demand of her? Her he DROVE into thought, drove inexorably
into knowledge--and then execrated her for it.
'He wants me to sink myself,' Ursula resumed, 'not to have any being of
my own--' 'Then why doesn't he marry an odalisk?' said Hermione in her mild
sing-song, 'if it is that he wants.' Her long face looked sardonic and
amused.
'Yes,' said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing was, he did
not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been
his slave--there was in her a horrible desire to prostrate herself
before a man--a man who worshipped her, however, and admitted her as
the supreme thing. He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to
TAKE something from him, to give herself up so much that she could take
the last realities of him, the last facts, the last physical facts,
physical and unbearable.
And if she did, would he acknowledge her? Would he be able to
acknowledge her through everything, or would he use her just as his
instrument, use her for his own private satisfaction, not admitting
her? That was what the other men had done. They had wanted their own
show, and they would not admit her, they turned all she was into
nothingness. Just as Hermione now betrayed herself as a woman. Hermione
was like a man, she believed only in men's things. She betrayed the
woman in herself. And Birkin, would he acknowledge, or would he deny
her?
'Yes,' said Hermione, as each woman came out of her own separate
reverie. 'It would be a mistake--I think it would be a mistake--' 'To marry him?' asked Ursula.
'Yes,' said Hermione slowly--'I think you need a man--soldierly,
strong-willed--' Hermione held out her hand and clenched it with
rhapsodic intensity. 'You should have a man like the old heroes--you
need to stand behind him as he goes into battle, you need to SEE his
strength, and to HEAR his shout--. You need a man physically strong,
and virile in his will, NOT a sensitive man--.' There was a break, as
if the pythoness had uttered the oracle, and now the woman went on, in
a rhapsody-wearied voice: 'And you see, Rupert isn't this, he isn't. He
is frail in health and body, he needs great, great care. Then he is so
changeable and unsure of himself--it requires the greatest patience and
understanding to help him. And I don't think you are patient. You would
have to be prepared to suffer--dreadfully. I can't TELL you how much
suffering it would take to make him happy. He lives an INTENSELY
spiritual life, at times--too, too wonderful. And then come the
reactions. I can't speak of what I have been through with him. We have
been together so long, I really do know him, I DO know what he is. And
I feel I must say it; I feel it would be perfectly DISASTROUS for you
to marry him--for you even more than for him.' Hermione lapsed into
bitter reverie. 'He is so uncertain, so unstable--he wearies, and then
reacts. I couldn't TELL you what his re-actions are. I couldn't TELL
you the agony of them. That which he affirms and loves one day--a
little latter he turns on it in a fury of destruction. He is never
constant, always this awful, dreadful reaction. Always the quick change
from good to bad, bad to good. And nothing is so devastating,
nothing--' 'Yes,' said Ursula humbly, 'you must have suffered.' An unearthly light came on Hermione's face. She clenched her hand like
one inspired.