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“Vile!” said Ursula. “It really is.”

And she recognised half-burnt covers of “Vogue”—half-burnt representations of women in gowns—lying under the grate.

They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in air; without weight or substance, only a sense of intolerable papery imprisonment in nothingness. The kitchen did look more substantial, because of the red-tiled floor and the stove, but it was cold and horrid.

The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every sound re-echoed under their hearts. They tramped down the bare corridor. Against the wall of Ursula’s bedroom were her things—a trunk, a work-basket, some books, loose coats, a hat-box, standing desolate in the universal emptiness of the dusk.

“A cheerful sight, aren’t they?” said Ursula, looking down at her forsaken possessions.

“Very cheerful,” said Gudrun.

The two girls set to, carrying everything down to the front door. Again and again they made the hollow, re-echoing transit. The whole place seemed to resound about them with a noise of hollow, empty futility. In the distance the empty, invisible rooms sent forth a vibration almost of obscenity. They almost fled with the last articles, into the out-of-door.

But it was cold. They were waiting for Birkin, who was coming with the car. They went indoors again, and upstairs to their parents’ front bedroom, whose windows looked down on the road, across the country at the black-barred sunset, black and red barred, without light.

They sat down in the window-seat, to wait. Both girls were looking over the room. It was void, with a meaninglessness that was almost dreadful.

“Really,” said Ursula, “this room couldn’t be sacred, could it?”

Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes.

“Impossible,” she replied.

“When I think of their lives—father’s and mother’s, their love, and their marriage, and all of us children, and our bringing-up—would you have such a life, Prune?”

“I wouldn’t, Ursula.”

“It all seems so nothing—their two lives—there’s no meaning in it. Really, if they had not met, and not married, and not lived together—it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?”

“Of course—you can’t tell,” said Gudrun.

“No. But if I thought my life was going to be like it—Prune,” she caught Gudrun’s arm, “I should run.”

Gudrun was silent for a few moments.

“As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary life—one cannot contemplate it,” replied Gudrun. “With you, Ursula, it is quite different. You will be out of it all, with Birkin. He’s a special case. But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in one place, marriage is just impossible. There may be, and there are, thousands of women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else. But the very thought of it sends me mad. One must be free, above all, one must be free. One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one must not become 7, Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or Shortlands. No man will be sufficient to make that good—no man! To marry, one must have a free lance, or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glücksritter.cm A man with a position in the social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!”

“What a lovely word—a Glücksritter!” said Ursula. “So much nicer than a soldier of fortune.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Gudrun. “I’d tilt the world with a Glücksritter. But a home, an establishment! Ursula, what would it mean?—think!”

“I know,” said Ursula. “We’ve had one home—that’s enough for me.”

“Quite enough,” said Gudrun.

“The little grey home in the west,” quoted Ursula ironically.

“Doesn’t it sound grey, too,” said Gudrun grimly.

They were interrupted by the sound of the car. There was Birkin. Ursula was surprised that she felt so lit up, that she became suddenly so free from the problems of grey homes in the west.

They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below.

“Hello!” he called, his voice echoing alive through the house. Ursula smiled to herself. He was frightened of the place too.

“Hello! Here we are,” she called downstairs. And they heard him quickly running up.

“This is a ghostly situation,