go on now for days like this, in this bright frank state of
seemingly pure spontaneity, so essentially oblivious of the existence of
anything but herself, but so ready and facile in her interest. Ah, it was a
bitter thing for a man to be near her, and her father cursed his fatherhood. But
he must learn not to see her, not to know.
    She was perfectly stable in resistance when she was in this state: so bright
and radiant and attractive in her pure opposition, so very pure, and yet
mistrusted by everybody, disliked on every hand. It was her voice, curiously
clear and repellant, that gave her away. Only Gudrun was in accord with her. It
was at these times that the intimacy between the two sisters was most complete,
as if their intelligence were one. They felt a strong, bright bond of
understanding between them, surpassing everything else. And during all these
days of blind bright abstraction and intimacy of his two daughters, the father
seemed to breathe an air of death, as if he were destroyed in his very being. He
was irritable to madness, he could not rest, his daughters seemed to be
destroying him. But he was inarticulate and helpless against them. He was forced
to breathe the air of his own death. He cursed them in his soul, and only wanted
that they should be removed from him.
    They continued radiant in their easy female transcendency, beautiful to look
at. They exchanged confidences, they were intimate in their revelations to the
last degree, giving each other at last every secret. They withheld nothing, they
told everything, till they were over the border of evil. And they armed each
other with knowledge, they extracted the subtlest flavours from the apple of
knowledge. It was curious how their knowledge was complementary, that of each to
that of the other.
    Ursula saw her men as sons, pitied their yearning and admired their courage,
and wondered over them as a mother wonders over her child, with a certain
delight in their novelty. But to Gudrun, they were the opposite camp. She feared
them and despised them, and respected their activities even overmuch.
    »Of course,« she said easily, »there is a quality of life in Birkin which is
quite remarkable. There is an extraordinary rich spring of life in him, really
amazing, the way he can give himself to things. But there are so many things in
life that he simply doesn't know. Either he is not aware of their existence at
all, or he dismisses them as merely negligible - things