 there is not
love.«
    She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could
not submit.
    »But how do you know - if you have never really loved?« she asked.
    »It is true what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further
than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of
them.«
    »Then there is no love,« cried Ursula.
    »Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there is no
love.«
    Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose
from her chair, saying, in a final, repellant voice:
    »Then let me go home - what am I doing here?«
    »There is the door,« he said. »You are a free agent.«
    He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless
for some seconds, then she sat down again.
    »If there is no love, what is there?« she cried, almost jeering.
    »Something,« he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his
might.
    »What?«
    He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while
she was in this state of opposition.
    »There is,« he said, in a voice of pure abstraction, »a final me which is
stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it
is there I would want to meet you - not in the emotional, loving plane - but
there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are
two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to
approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no
standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that
plane. It is quite inhuman - so there can be no calling to book, in any form
whatsoever - because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and
nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies
in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only
each taking according to the primal desire.«
    Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he
said was so unexpected and so untoward.
    »It is just purely selfish,« she said.
    »If it is pure,
