 the Midlands. Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet of the old
school, she was a woman of the new school, full of intellectuality, and heavy,
nerve-worn with consciousness. She was passionately interested in reform, her
soul was given up to the public cause. But she was a man's woman, it was the
manly world that held her.
    She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various men of capacity.
Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert Birkin, who was one of the
school-inspectors of the county. But Gudrun had met others, in London. Moving
with her artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun had already come
to know a good many people of repute and standing. She had met Hermione twice,
but they did not take to each other. It would be queer to meet again down here
in the Midlands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they had
known each other on terms of equality in the houses of sundry acquaintances in
town. For Gudrun had been a social success, and had her friends among the slack
aristocracy that keeps touch with the arts.
    Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself to be the social
equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she was likely to meet in Willey
Green. She knew she was accepted in the world of culture and of intellect. She
was a Kulturträger, a medium for the culture of ideas. With all that was
highest, whether in society or in thought or in public action, or even in art,
she was at one, she moved among the foremost, at home with them. No one could
put her down, no one could make mock of her, because she stood among the first,
and those that were against her were below her, either in rank, or in wealth, or
in high association of thought and progress and understanding. So, she was
invulnerable. All her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable,
unassailable, beyond reach of the world's judgment.
    And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up the path to the
church, confident as she was that in every respect she stood beyond all vulgar
judgment, knowing perfectly that her appearance was complete and perfect,
according to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under her
confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds and to mockery and
to despite. She always felt vulnerable, vulnerable, there was always a secret
chink in her armour. She did not know herself what it was
