Ursula was dazed, her mind was all gone. She felt she had fallen to the ground and was spilled out, like water on the earth. Motionless and spent she remained in the gloom. Though even now she was aware, unseeing, that in the darkness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of light, a cluster dancing secretly in a round, twining and coming steadily together. They were gathering a heart again, they were coming once more into being. Gradually the fragments caught together reunited, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as in panic, but working their way home again persistently, making semblance of fleeing away when they had advanced, but always flickering nearer, a little closer to the mark, the cluster growing mysteriously larger and brighter, as gleam after gleam fell in with the whole, until a ragged rose, a distorted, frayed moon was shaking upon the waters again, reasserted, renewed, trying to recover from its convulsion, to get over the disfigurement and the agitation, to be whole and composed, at peace.
Birkin lingered vaguely by the water. Ursula was afraid that he would stone the moon again. She slipped from her seat and went down to him, saying:
“You won’t throw stones at it any more, will you?”
“How long have you been there?”
“All the time. You won’t throw any more stones, will you?”
“I wanted to see if I could make it be quite gone off the pond,” he said.
“Yes, it was horrible, really. Why should you hate the moon? It hasn’t done you any harm, has it?”
“Was it hate?” he said.
And they were silent for a few minutes.
“When did you come back?” she said.
“Today.”
“Why did you never write?”
“I could find nothing to say.”
“Why was there nothing to say?”
“I don’t know. Why are there no daffodils now?”
“No.”
Again there was a space of silence. Ursula looked at the moon. It had gathered itself together, and was quivering slightly.
“Was it good for you, to be alone?” she asked.
“Perhaps. Not that I know much. But I got over a good deal. Did you do anything important?”
“No. I looked at England, and thought I’d done with it.”
“Why England?” he asked in surprise.
“I don’t know, it came like that.”
“It isn’t a question of nations,” he said. “France is far worse.”
“Yes, I know. I felt I’d done with it all.”
They went and sat down on the roots of the trees, in the shadow. And being silent, he remembered the beauty of her eyes, which were sometimes filled with light, like spring, suffused with wonderful promise. So he said to her, slowly, with difficulty:
“There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would give me.” It was as if he had been thinking of this for some time.
She was startled, she seemed to leap clear of him. Yet also she was pleased.
“What kind of a light,” she asked.
But he was shy, and did not say any more. So the moment passed for this time. And gradually a feeling of sorrow came over her.
“My life is unfulfilled,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this.
“And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,” she said.
But he did not answer.
“You think, don’t you,” she said slowly, “that I only want physical things? It isn’t true. I want you to serve my spirit.”
“I know you do. I know you don’t want physical things by themselves. But, I want you to give me—to give your spirit to me—that golden light which is you—which you don’t know—give it me—”
After a moment’s silence she replied:
“But how can I, you don’t love me! You only want your own ends. You don’t want to serve me, and yet you want me to serve you. It is so one-sided!”
It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit.
“It is different,” he said. “The two kinds of service are so different. I serve you in another way—not through yourself—somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves—to be really together because we are together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.”
“No,” she said, pondering. “You are just egocentric. You never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You want yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be there, to serve you.”
But this only made him shut off from her.
“Ah well,” he said, “words make no matter, anyway. The thing is between us, or it isn’t.”
“You don’t even love me,” she cried.
“I do,” he said angrily. “But I want—” His mind saw again the lovely golden light of spring transfused through her eyes, as through some wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this world of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted this company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, anyway? It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could never be netted, it must fly by itself to the heart.
“I always think I am going to be loved—and then I am let down. You don’t love me, you know. You don’t want to serve me. You only want yourself.”
A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: “You don’t want to serve me.” All the paradisal disappeared from him.
“No,” he said, irritated, “I don’t want to serve you, because there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, is nothing, mere nothing. It isn’t even you, it is your mere female quality. And I
