Page 651 - women-in-love

you’ll NEED that, really to make a world?’
Ursula was silent, trying to imagine.
‘I think,’ she said at length, involuntarily, ‘that Rupert is
right—one wants a new space to be in, and one falls away
from the old.’
Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and
steady eyes.
‘One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree,’ she said.
‘But I think that a new world is a development from this
world, and that to isolate oneself with one other person,
isn’t to find a new world at all, but only to secure oneself in
one’s illusions.’
Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to
wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened
of words, because she knew that mere word-force could al-
ways make her believe what she did not believe.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, full of mistrust, of herself and ev-
erybody. ‘But,’ she added, ‘I do think that one can’t have
anything new whilst one cares for the old—do you know
what I mean?—even fighting the old is belonging to it. I
know, one is tempted to stop with the world, just to fight it.
But then it isn’t worth it.’
Gudrun considered herself.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In a way, one is of the world if one lives in
it. But isn’t it really an illusion to think you can get out of
it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever it may be,
isn’t a new world. No, the only thing to do with the world,
is to see it through.’
Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument.

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