NEXT DAY Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the half-day at the Grammar School. He appeared towards the end of the morning, and asked her, would she drive with him in the afternoon. She consented. But her face was closed and unresponding, and his heart sank.

The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motor-car, and she sat beside him. But still her face was closed against him, unresponding. When she became like this, like a wall against him, his heart contracted.

His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any more. At moments it seemed to him he did not care a straw whether Ursula or Hermione or anybody else existed or did not exist. Why bother! Why strive for a coherent, satisfied life? Why not drift on in a series of accidents--like a picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human relationships? Why take them seriously--male or female? Why form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking all for what it was worth?

And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious living.

`Look,' he said, `what I bought.' The car was running along a broad white road, between autumn trees.

He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it and opened it.

`How lovely,' she cried.

She examined the gift.

`How perfectly lovely!' she cried again. `But why do you give them me?' She put the question offensively.

His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

`I wanted to,' he said, coolly.

`But why? Why should you?'

`Am I called on to find reasons?' he asked.

There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had been screwed up in the paper.

`I think they are beautiful,' she said, `especially this. This is wonderful-'

It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny rubies.

`You like that best?' he said.

`I think I do.'

`I like the sapphire,' he said.

`This?'

It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small brilliants.

`Yes,' she said, `it is lovely.' She held it in the light. `Yes, perhaps it is the best--'

`The blue--' he said.

`Yes, wonderful--'

He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart. It tilted on the bank. He was a careless driver, yet very quick. But Ursula was frightened. There was always that something regardless in him which terrified her. She suddenly felt he might kill her, by making some dreadful accident with the motor-car. For a moment she was stony with fear.

`Isn't it rather dangerous, the way you drive?' she asked him.

`No, it isn't dangerous,' he said. And then, after a pause: `Don't you like the yellow ring at all?'

It was a squarish topaz set in a frame of steel, or some other similar mineral, finely wrought.

`Yes,' she said, `I do like it. But why did you buy these rings?'

`I wanted them. They are second-hand.'

`You bought them for yourself?'

`No. Rings look wrong on my hands.'

`Why did you buy them then?'

`I bought them to give to you.'

`But why? Surely you ought to give them to Hermione! You belong to her.'

He did not answer. She remained with the jewels shut in her hand. She wanted to try them on her fingers, but something in her would not let her. And moreover, she was afraid her hands were too large, she shrank from the mortification of a failure to put them on any but her little finger. They travelled in silence through the empty lanes.

Driving in a motor-car excited her, she forgot his presence even.

`Where are we?' she asked suddenly.

`Not far from Worksop.'

`And where are we going?'

`Anywhere.'

It was the answer she liked.

She opened her hand to look at the rings. They gave her such pleasure, as they lay, the three circles, with their knotted jewels, entangled in her palm. She would have to try them on. She did so secretly, unwilling to let him see, so that he should not know her finger was too large for them. But he saw nevertheless. He always saw, if she wanted him not to. It was another of his hateful, watchful characteristics.

Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger. And she was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not accept this ring from him in pledge.

`Look,' she said, putting forward her hand, that was half-closed and shrinking. `The others don't fit me.'

He looked at the red-glinting, soft stone, on her over-sensitive skin.

`Yes,' he said.

`But opals are unlucky, aren't they?' she said wistfully.

`No. I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who wants what luck would bring? I don't.'

`But why?' she laughed.

And, consumed with a desire to see how the other rings would look on her hand, she put them on her little finger.

`They can be made a little bigger,' he said.

`Yes,' she replied, doubtfully. And she sighed. She knew that, in accepting the rings, she was accepting a pledge. Yet fate seemed more than herself. She looked again at the jewels. They were very beautiful to her eyes--not as ornament, or wealth, but as tiny fragments of loveliness.

`I'm glad you bought them,' she said, putting her hand, half unwillingly, gently on his arm.

He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But he was angry at the bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He knew she had a passion for him, really. But it was not finally interesting. There were depths of passion when one became impersonal and indifferent, unemotional. Whereas Ursula was still at the emotional personal level--always so abominably personal. He had taken her as he had never been taken himself. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame--like a demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting finally. As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to accept him at the quick of death?

She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and their motives--Gudrun, Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much interested any more in personalities and in people--people were all different, but they were all enclosed nowadays in a definite limitation, he said; there were only about two great ideas, two great streams of activity remaining, with various forms of reaction therefrom. The reactions were all varied in various people, but they followed a few great laws, and intrinsically there was no difference. They acted and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and once the laws, the great principles, were known, people were no longer mystically interesting. They were all essentially alike, the differences were only variations on a theme. None of them transcended the given terms.

Ursula did not agree--people were still an adventure to her--but--perhaps not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was something mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest was destructive, her analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was an under-space in her where she did not care for people and their idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. She seemed to touch for a moment this undersilence in herself, she became still, and she turned for a moment purely to Birkin.

`Won't it be lovely to go home in the dark?' she said. `We might have tea rather late--shall we?--and have high tea? Wouldn't that be rather nice?'

`I promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,' he said.

`But--it doesn't matter--you can go tomorrow--'

`Hermione is there,' he said, in rather an uneasy voice. `She is going away in two days. I suppose I ought to say good-bye to her. I shall never see her again.'

Ursula drew away, closed in a violent silence. He knitted his brows, and his eyes began to sparkle again in anger.

`You don't mind, do you?' he asked irritably.

`No, I don't care. Why should I? Why should I mind?' Her tone was jeering and offensive.

`That's what I ask myself,' he said; `why should you mind! But you seem to.' His brows were tense with violent irritation.

`I assure you I don't, I don't mind in the least. Go where you belong--it's what I want you to do.'

`Ah you fool!' he cried, `with your "go where you belong." It's finished between Hermione and me. She means much more to you, if it comes to that, than she does to me. For you can only revolt in pure reaction from her--and to be her opposite is to be her counterpart.'

`Ah, opposite!' cried Ursula. `I know your dodges. I am not taken in by your word-twisting. You belong to Hermione and her dead show. Well, if you do, you do. I don't blame you. But then you've nothing to do with me.

In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the car, and they sat there, in the middle of the country lane, to have it out. It was a crisis of war between them, so they did not see the ridiculousness of their situation.

`If you weren't a fool, if only you weren't a fool,' he cried in bitter despair, `you'd see that one could be decent, even when one has been wrong. I was wrong to go on all those years with Hermione -- it was a deathly process. But after all, one can have a little human decency. But no, you would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of Hermione's name.'

`I jealous! I -- jealous! You are mistaken if you think that. I'm not jealous in the least of Hermione, she is nothing to me, not that!' And Ursula snapped her fingers. `No, it's you who are a liar. It's you who must return, like a dog to his vomit. It is what Hermione stands for that I hate. I hate it. It is lies, it is false, it is death. But you want it, you can't help it, you can't help yourself. You belong to that old, deathly way of living -then go back to it. But don't come to me, for I've nothing to do with it.'

And in the stress of her violent emotion, she got down from the car and went to the hedgerow, picking unconsciously some flesh-pink spindleberries, some of which were burst, showing their orange seeds.

`Ah, you are a fool,' he cried, bitterly, with some contempt.

`Yes, I am. I am a fool. And thank God for it. I'm too big a fool to swallow your cleverness. God be praised. You go to your women -- go to them -- they are your sort -- you've always had a string of them trailing after you -- and you always will. Go to your spiritual brides -- but don't come to me as well, because I'm not having any, thank you. You're not satisfied, are you? Your spiritual brides can't give you what you want, they aren't common and fleshy enough for you, aren't they? So you come to me, and keep them in the background! You will marry me for daily use. But you'll keep yourself well provided with spiritual brides in the background. I know your dirty little game.' Suddenly a flame ran over her, and she stamped her foot madly on the road, and he winced, afraid that she would strike him. `And I, I'm not spiritual enough, I'm not as spiritual as that Hermione --!' Her brows knitted, her eyes blazed like a tiger's. `Then go to her, that's all I say, go to her, go. Ha, she spiritual - spiritual, she! A dirty materialist as she is. She spiritual? What does she care for, what is her spirituality? What is it?' Her fury seemed to blaze out and burn his face. He shrank a little. `I tell you it's dirt, dirt, and nothing but dirt. And it's dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is that spiritual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She's a fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. And all so sordid. What does she work out to, in the end, with all her social passion, as you call it. Social passion -- what social passion has she? -- show it me! -- where is it? She wants petty, immediate power, she wants the illusion that she is a great woman, that is all. In her soul she's a devilish unbeliever, common as dirt. That's what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is pretence -- but you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it's your food. And why? Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don't know the foulness of your sex life -- and her's? -- I do. And it's that foulness you w
ant, you liar. Then have it, have it. You're such a liar.'

She turned away, spasmodically tearing the twigs of spindleberry from the hedge, and fastening them, with vibrating fingers, in the bosom of her coat.

He stood watching in silence. A wonderful tenderness burned in him, at the sight of her quivering, so sensitive fingers: and at the same time he was full of rage and callousness.

`This is a degrading exhibition,' he said coolly.

`Yes, degrading indeed,' she said. `But more to me than to you.'

`Since you choose to degrade yourself,' he said. Again the flash came over her face, the yellow lights concentrated in her eyes.

`You!' she cried. `You! You truth-lover! You purity-monger! It stinks, your truth and your purity. It stinks of the offal you feed on, you scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. You are foul, foul and you must know it. Your purity, your candour, your goodness -- yes, thank you, we've had some. What you are is a foul, deathly thing, obscene, that's what you are, obscene and perverse. You, and love! You may well say, you don't want love. No, you want yourself, and dirt, and death -- that's what you want. You are so perverse, so death-eating. And then --'

`There's a bicycle coming,' he said, writhing under her loud denunciation.

She glanced down the road.

`I don't care,' she cried.

Nevertheless she was silent. The cyclist, having heard the voices raised in altercation, glanced curiously at the man, and the woman, and at the standing motor-car as he passed.

`-- Afternoon,' he said, cheerfully.

`Good-afternoon,' replied Birkin coldly.

They were silent as the man passed into the distance.

A clearer look had come over Birkin's face. He knew she was in the main right. He knew he was perverse, so spiritual on the one hand, and in some strange way, degraded, on the other. But was she herself any better? Was anybody any better?

`It may all be true, lies and stink and all,' he said. `But Hermione's spiritual intimacy is no rottener than your emotional-jealous intimacy. One can preserve the decencies, even to one's enemies: for one's own sake. Hermione is my enemy -- to her last breath! That's why I must bow her off the field.'

`You! You and your enemies and your bows! A pretty picture you make of yourself. But it takes nobody in but yourself. I jealous! I! What I say,' her voice sprang into flame, `I say because it is true, do you see, because you are you, a foul and false liar, a whited sepulchre. That's why I say it. And you hear it.'

`And be grateful,' he added, with a satirical grimace.

`Yes,' she cried, `and if you have a spark of decency in you, be grateful.'

`Not having a spark of decency, however --' he retorted.

`No,' she cried, `you haven't a spark. And so you can go your way, and I'll go mine. It's no good, not the slightest. So you can leave me now, I don't want to go any further with you -- leave me --'

`You don't even know where you are,' he said.

`Oh, don't bother, I assure you I shall be all right. I've got ten shillings in my purse, and that will take me back from anywhere you have brought me to.' She hesitated. The rings were still on her fingers, two on her little finger, one on her ring finger. Still she hesitated.

`Very good,' he said. `The only hopeless thing is a fool.'

`You are quite right,' she said.

Still she hesitated. Then an ugly, malevolent look came over her face, she pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them at him. One touched his face, the others hit his coat, and they scattered into the mud.

`And take your rings,' she said, `and go and buy yourself a female elsewhere -- there are plenty to be had, who will be quite glad to share your spiritual mess, -- or to have your physical mess, and leave your spiritual mess to Hermione.'

With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He stood motionless, watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She was sullenly picking and pulling at the twigs of the hedge as she passed. She grew smaller, she seemed to pass out of his sight. A darkness came over his mind. Only a small, mechanical speck of consciousness hovered near him.

He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He gave up his old position. He went and sat on the bank. No doubt Ursula was right. It was true, really, what she said. He knew that his spirituality was concomitant of a process of depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There really was a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him -- especially when it was translated spiritually. But then he knew it -- he knew it, and had done. And was not Ursula's way of emotional intimacy, emotional and physical, was it not just as dangerous as Hermione's abstract spiritual intimacy? Fusion, fusion, this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and most men insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, to which all men must come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the bath of birth, to which all men must come! And both were horrible. Why could they not remain individuals, limited by their own limits? Why this dreadful allcomprehensiveness, this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being, free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself utterly to the moments, but not to any other being.

He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of the road. He picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously on his hands. They were the little tokens of the reality of beauty, the reality of happiness in warm creation. But he had made his hands all dirty and gritty.

There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of consciousness that had persisted there like an obsession was broken, gone, his life was dissolved in darkness over his limbs and his body. But there was a point of anxiety in his heart now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed lightly and regularly like an infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the touch of responsibility.

She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily under the high hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look again. He was as if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed.

She came up and stood before him, hanging her head.

`See what a flower I found you,' she said, wistfully holding a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw the clump of coloured bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: also her hands, with their over-fine, over-sensitive skin.

`Pretty!' he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the flower. Everything had become simple again, quite simple, the complexity gone into nowhere. But he badly wanted to cry: except that he was weary and bored by emotion.

Then a hot passion of tenderness for her filled his heart. He stood up and looked into her face. It was new and oh, so delicate in its luminous wonder and fear. He put his arms round her, and she hid her face on his shoulder.

It was peace, just simple peace, as he stood folding her quietly there on the open lane. It was peace at last. The old, detestable world of tension had passed away at last, his soul was strong and at ease.

She looked up at him. The wonderful yellow light in her eyes now was soft and yielded, they were at peace with each other. He kissed her, softly, many, many times. A laugh came into her eyes.

`Did I abuse you?' she asked.

He smiled too, and took her hand, that was so soft and given.

`Never mind,' she said, `it is all for the good.' He kissed her again, softly, many times.

`Isn't it?' she said.

`Certainly,' he replied. `Wait! I shall have my own back.'

She laughed suddenly, with a wild catch in her voice, and flung her arms around him.

`You are mine, my love, aren't you?' she cried straining him close.

`Yes,' he said, softly.

His voice was so soft and final, she went very still, as if under a fate which had taken her. Yes, she acquiesced -- but it was accomplished without her acquiescence. He was kissing her quietly, repeatedly, with a soft, still happiness that almost made her heart stop beating.

`My love!' she cried, lifting her face and looking with frightened, gentle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his eyes were beautiful and soft and immune from stress or excitement, beautiful and smiling lightly to her, smiling with her. She hid her face on his shoulder, hiding before him, because he could see her so completely. She knew he loved her, and she was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new heaven round about her. She wished he were passionate, because in passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is more frightening than force.

Again, quickly, she lifted her head.

`Do you love me?' she said, quickly, impulsively.

`Yes,' he replied, not heeding her motion, only her stillness.

She knew it was true. She broke away.

`So you ought,' she said, turning round to look at the road. `Did you find the rings?'

`Yes.'

`Where are they?'

`In my pocket.'

She put her hand into his pocket and took them out.

She was restless.

`Shall we go?' she said.

`Yes,' he answered. And they mounted to the car once more, and left behind them this memorable battle-field.

They drifted through t............