What was it, after all, that a woman wanted? Was it mere social effect,
fulfilment of ambition in the social world, in the community of
mankind? Was it even a union in love and goodness? Did she want
'goodness'? Who but a fool would accept this of Gudrun? This was but
the street view of her wants. Cross the threshold, and you found her
completely, completely cynical about the social world and its
advantages. Once inside the house of her soul and there was a pungent
atmosphere of corrosion, an inflamed darkness of sensation, and a
vivid, subtle, critical consciousness, that saw the world distorted,
horrific.
What then, what next? Was it sheer blind force of passion that would
satisfy her now? Not this, but the subtle thrills of extreme sensation
in reduction. It was an unbroken will reacting against her unbroken
will in a myriad subtle thrills of reduction, the last subtle
activities of analysis and breaking down, carried out in the darkness
of her, whilst the outside form, the individual, was utterly unchanged,
even sentimental in its poses.
But between two particular people, any two people on earth, the range
of pure sensational experience is limited. The climax of sensual
reaction, once reached in any direction, is reached finally, there is
no going on. There is only repetition possible, or the going apart of
the two protagonists, or the subjugating of the one will to the other,
or death.
Gerald had penetrated all the outer places of Gudrun's soul. He was to
her the most crucial instance of the existing world, the NE PLUS ULTRA
of the world of man as it existed for her. In him she knew the world,
and had done with it. Knowing him finally she was the Alexander seeking
new worlds. But there WERE no new worlds, there were no more MEN, there
were only creatures, little, ultimate CREATURES like Loerke. The world
was finished now, for her. There was only the inner, individual
darkness, sensation within the ego, the obscene religious mystery of
ultimate reduction, the mystic frictional activities of diabolic
reducing down, disintegrating the vital organic body of life.
All this Gudrun knew in her subconsciousness, not in her mind. She knew
her next step-she knew what she should move on to, when she left
Gerald. She was afraid of Gerald, that he might kill her. But she did
not intend to be killed. A fine thread still united her to him. It
should not be HER death which broke it. She had further to go, a
further, slow exquisite experience to reap, unthinkable subtleties of
sensation to know, before she was finished.