want is pornography--looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your
naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your
consciousness, make it all mental.'
There was a sense of violation in the air, as if too much was said, the
unforgivable. Yet Ursula was concerned now only with solving her own
problems, in the light of his words. She was pale and abstracted.
'But do you really WANT sensuality?' she asked, puzzled.
Birkin looked at her, and became intent in his explanation.
'Yes,' he said, 'that and nothing else, at this point. It is a
fulfilment--the great dark knowledge you can't have in your head--the
dark involuntary being. It is death to one's self--but it is the coming
into being of another.'
'But how? How can you have knowledge not in your head?' she asked,
quite unable to interpret his phrases.
'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"--' he quoted--'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 on a shrill little laugh of pure
ridicule. The two women were jeering at him, jeering him into
nothingness. The laugh of the 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!
Good-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
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