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“In the blood,” he answered; “when the mind and the known world is drowned in darkness—everything must go—there must be the deluge. Then you find yourself a palpable body of darkness, a demon—”

“But why should I be a demon—?” she asked.

“ ‘Woman wailing for her demon lover,—”hequoted2—“why, I don’t know.”

Hermione roused herself as from a death—annihilation.

“He is such a dreadful satanist, isn’t he?” she drawled to Ursula, in a queer resonant voice, that ended in a shrill little laugh of pure ridicule. The two women were jeering at him, jeering him into nothingness. The laugh of the sneering, shrill, triumphant female sounded from Hermione, jeering him as if he were a neuter.

“No,” he said. “You are the real devil who won’t let life exist.”

She looked at him with a long, slow look, malevolent, supercilious.

“You know all about it, don’t you?” she said, with slow, cold, cunning mockery.

“Enough,” he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like steel. A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of release, liberation, came over Hermione. She turned with a pleasant intimacy to Ursula.

“You are sure you will come to Breadalby?” she said, urging.

“Yes, I should like to very much,” replied Ursula.

Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there.

“I’m so glad,” she said, pulling herself together. “Some time in about a fortnight. Yes?—I will write to you here, at the school, shall I?—Yes.—And you’ll be sure to come?—Yes.—I shall be so glad. Good-bye—Goo-ood-bye.—”

Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the other woman. She knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and the knowledge strangely exhilarated her. Also she was taking leave. It always gave her a sense of strength, advantage, to be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she was taking the man with her, if only in hate.

Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to bid good-bye, he began to speak again.

“There’s the whole difference in the world,” he said, “between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there’s always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. You’ve got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being.

“But we have got such a conceit of ourselves—that’s where it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We’ve got no pride, we’re all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-mâché realised selves. We’d rather die than give up our little self-righteous self-opinionated self-will.”

There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful. He sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no attention, stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike.

Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she was seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him—a curious hidden richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like another voice, conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself, something like laughter, invisible and satisfying. Also the magic of his thighs had fascinated her: the inner slopes of his thighs. She could not say what it was. But there was a sense of richness and of strong, free liberty.

“But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren’t we?” she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not relax.

“No,” he said, “we weren’t. We’re too full of ourselves.”

“Surely it isn’t a matter of conceit,” she cried.

“That and nothing