`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 always make her believe what she did not believe.
`Perhaps,' she said, full of mistrust, of herself and everybody.`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.
`But there can be something else, can't there?' she said.`One can see it through in one's soul, long enough before it sees itself through in actuality.And then, when one has seen one's soul, one is something else.'
` Can one see it through in one's soul?' asked Gudrun.`If you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I don't agree.Ireally can't agree.And anyhow, you can't suddenly fly off on to a new planet, because you think you can see to the end of this.'
Ursula suddenly straightened herself.
`Yes,' she said.`Yes -- one knows.One has no more connections here.
One has a sort of other self, that belongs to a new planet, not to this.
You've got to hop off.'
Gudrun reflected for a few moments.Then a smile of ridicule, almost of contempt, came over her face.
`And what will happen when you find yourself in space?' she cried in derision.`After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there.
You above everybody can't get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing, in space as well as on earth.'
`No,' said Ursula, `it isn't.Love is too human and little.I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part.I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love.It isn't so merely human.'
Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes.She admired and despised her sister so much, both! Then, suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglily:
`Well, I've got no further than love, yet.'
Over Ursula's mind flashed the thought: `Because you never have loved, you can't get beyond it.'
Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck.
`Go and find your new world, dear,' she said, her voice clanging with false benignity.`After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of Rupert's Blessed Isles.'
Her arm rested round Ursula's neck, her fingers on Ursula's cheek for a few moments.Ursula was supremely uncomfortable meanwhile.There was an insult in Gudrun's protective patronage that was really too hurting.
Feeling her sister's resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow, and disclosed the stockings again.
