Page 119 - women-in-love

Hermione lifted her face and rumbled—
‘M—m—m—I don’t know … But one thing was the stars,
when I really understood something about the stars. One
feels so UPLIFTED, so UNBOUNDED …’
Birkin looked at her in a white fury.
‘What do you want to feel unbounded for?’ he said sar-
castically. ‘You don’t want to BE unbounded.’
Hermione recoiled in offence.
‘Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,’ said Ger-
ald. ‘It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the
Pacific.’
‘Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,’ murmured the Italian,
lifting her face for a moment from her book.
‘Not necessarily in Dariayn,’ said Gerald, while Ursula
began to laugh.
Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said,
untouched:
‘Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to KNOW. It is really
to be happy, to be FREE.’
‘Knowledge is, of course, liberty,’ said Mattheson.
‘In compressed tabloids,’ said Birkin, looking at the dry,
stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw
the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of
compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled
and placed forever in her mind.
‘What does that mean, Rupert?’ sang Hermione, in a
calm snub.
‘You can only have knowledge, strictly,’ he replied, ‘of
things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of

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