don't you think?'
'Yes, I think. I hope it won't let me to the bottom, that's all. Though
even so, it isn't a great matter, I should come up again. Help me to
get it into the water, will you?'
With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and set it
afloat.
'Now,' he said, 'I'll try it and you can watch what happens. Then if it
carries, I'll take you over to the island.'
'Do,' she cried, watching anxiously.
The pond was large, and had that perfect stillness and the dark lustre
of very deep water. There were two small islands overgrown with bushes
and a few trees, towards the middle. Birkin pushed himself off, and
veered clumsily in the pond. Luckily the punt drifted so that he could
catch hold of a willow bough, and pull it to the island.
'Rather overgrown,' he said, looking into the interior, 'but very nice.
I'll come and fetch you. The boat leaks a little.'
In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the wet punt.
'It'll float us all right,' he said, and manoeuvred again to the
island.
They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the little jungle of
rank plants before her, evil-smelling figwort and hemlock. But he
explored into it.
'I shall mow this down,' he said, 'and then it will be romantic--like
Paul et Virginie.'
'Yes, one could have lovely Watteau picnics here,' cried Ursula with
enthusiasm.
His face darkened.
'I don't want Watteau picnics here,' he said.
'Only your Virginie,' she laughed.
'Virginie enough,' he smiled wryly. 'No, I don't want her either.'
Ursula looked at him closely. She had not seen him since Breadalby. He
was very thin and hollow, with a ghastly look in his face.
'You have been ill; haven't you?' she asked, rather repulsed.
'Yes,' he replied coldly.
They had sat down under the willow tree, and were looking at the pond,
from their retreat on the island.
'Has it made you frightened?' she asked.
'What of?' he asked, turning his eyes to look at her. Something in him,
inhuman and unmitigated, disturbed her, and shook her out of her
ordinary self.
'It IS frightening to be very ill, isn't it?' she said.
'It isn't pleasant,' he said. 'Whether one is really afraid of death,
or not, I have never decided. In one mood, not a bit, in another, very
much.'
'But doesn't it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes one so ashamed,
to be ill--illness is so terribly humiliating, don't you think?'
He considered for some minutes.
'May-be,' he said. 'Though one knows all the time one's life isn't
really right, at the source. That's the humiliation. I don't see that
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