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By Root 7817 0

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 heroes2—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 reactions are. I couldn’t tell you the agony of them. That which he affirms and loves one day—a little later 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.

“And one must be willing to suffer—willing to suffer for him hourly, daily—if you are going to help him, if he is to keep true to anything at all—”

“And I don’t want to suffer hourly and daily,” said Ursula. “I don’t, I should be ashamed. I think it is degrading not to be happy.”

Hermione stopped and looked at her a long time.

“Do you?” she said at last. And this utterance seemed to her a mark of Ursula’s far distance from herself. For to Hermione suffering was the greatest reality, come what might. Yet she too had a creed of happiness.

“Yes,” she said. “One should be happy—” But it was a matter of will.

“Yes,” said Hermione, listlessly now, “I can only feel that it would be disastrous, disastrous—at least, to marry in a hurry. Can’t you be together without marriage? Can’t you go away and live somewhere without marriage? I do feel that marriage would be fatal, for both of you. I think for you even more than for him—and I think of his health—”

“Of course,” said Ursula, “I don’t care about marriage—it isn’t really important to me—it’s he who wants it.”

“It is his idea for the moment,” said Hermione, with that weary finality, and a sort of si jeunesse savaitcd infallibility

There was a pause. Then Ursula broke into faltering challenge.

“You think I’m merely a physical woman, don’t you?”

“No, indeed,” said Hermione. “No, indeed! But I think you are vital and young—it isn’t a question of years, or even of experience—it is almost a question of race. Rupert is race-old, he comes of an old race—and you seem to me so young, you come of a young, inexperienced race.”

“Do I!” said Ursula. “But