Page 389 - women-in-love

He cannot allow that there is any other mind than his own.
And then the real clumsiness of his mind is its lack of self-
criticism. No, I think it would be perfectly intolerable.’
‘Yes,’ assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with
Gudrun. ‘The nuisance is,’ she said, ‘that one would find al-
most any man intolerable after a fortnight.’
‘It’s perfectly dreadful,’ said Gudrun. ‘But Birkin—he is
too positive. He couldn’t bear it if you called your soul your
own. Of him that is strictly true.’
‘Yes,’ said Ursula. ‘You must have HIS soul.’
‘Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?’ This
was all so true, that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her
soul with ugly distaste.
She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through
her, in the most barren of misery.
Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished
life off so thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final.
As a matter of fact, even if it were as Gudrun said, about
Birkin, other things were true as well. But Gudrun would
draw two lines under him and cross him out like an account
that is settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled,
done with. And it was such a lie. This finality of Gudrun’s,
this dispatching of people and things in a sentence, it was all
such a lie. Ursula began to revolt from her sister.
One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a
robin sitting on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The
sisters stood to look at him. An ironical smile flickered on
Gudrun’s face.
‘Doesn’t he feel important?’ smiled Gudrun.

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