her presence, a marvellous radiance of intrinsic vitality, was a
luminousness of supreme repudiation, nothing but repudiation.
Yet, at moments, she yielded and softened, she wanted pure love, only
pure love. This other, this state of constant unfailing repudiation,
was a strain, a suffering also. A terrible desire for pure love
overcame her again.
She went out one evening, numbed by this constant essential suffering.
Those who are timed for destruction must die now. The knowledge of this
reached a finality, a finishing in her. And the finality released her.
If fate would carry off in death or downfall all those who were timed
to go, why need she trouble, why repudiate any further. She was free of
it all, she could seek a new union elsewhere.
Ursula set off to Willey Green, towards the mill. She came to Willey
Water. It was almost full again, after its period of emptiness. Then
she turned off through the woods. The night had fallen, it was dark.
But she forgot to be afraid, she who had such great sources of fear.
Among the trees, far from any human beings, there was a sort of magic
peace. The more one could find a pure loneliness, with no taint of
people, the better one felt. She was in reality terrified, horrified in
her apprehension of people.
She started, noticing something on her right hand, between the tree
trunks. It was like a great presence, watching her, dodging her. She
started violently. It was only the moon, risen through the thin trees.
But it seemed so mysterious, with its white and deathly smile. And
there was no avoiding it. Night or day, one could not escape the
sinister face, triumphant and radiant like this moon, with a high
smile. She hurried on, cowering from the white planet. She would just
see the pond at the mill before she went home.
Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off
along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was
transcendent over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed
to it. There was a glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The
night was as clear as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant
coughing of a sheep.
So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above the pond,
where the alders twisted their roots. She was glad to pass into the
shade out of the moon. There she stood, at the top of the fallen-away
bank, her hand on the rough trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that
was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some
reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for
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