'Impossible,' she replied.
'When I think of their lives—father's and mother's, their love, and their marriage, and all of us children, and our bringing-up—would you have such a life, Prune?'
'I wouldn't, Ursula.'
'It all seems so NOTHING—their two lives—there's no meaning in it.
Really, if they had NOT met, and NOT married, and not lived together—it wouldn't have mattered, would it?'
'Of course—you can't tell,' said Gudrun.
'No.
But if I thought my life was going to be like it—Prune,' she caught Gudrun's arm, 'I should run.'
Gudrun was silent for a few moments.
'As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary life—one cannot contemplate it,' replied Gudrun. 'With you, Ursula, it is quite different.
You will be out of it all, with Birkin.
He's a special case.
But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in one place, marriage is just impossible.
There may be, and there ARE, thousands of women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else.
But the very thought of it sends me MAD.
One must be free, above all, one must be free.
One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one must not become 7, Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or Shortlands.
No man will be sufficient to make that good—no man!
To marry, one must have a free lance, or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glckstritter.
A man with a position in the social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!'
'What a lovely word—a Glckstritter!' said Ursula. 'So much nicer than a soldier of fortune.'
'Yes, isn't it?' said Gudrun. 'I'd tilt the world with a Glcksritter.
But a home, an establishment!
Ursula, what would it mean?—think!'
'I know,' said Ursula.
'We've had one home—that's enough for me.'
'Quite enough,' said Gudrun.
'The little grey home in the west,' quoted Ursula ironically.
'Doesn't it sound grey, too,' said Gudrun grimly.
They were interrupted by the sound of the car.
There was Birkin.
Ursula was surprised that she felt so lit up, that she became suddenly so free from the problems of grey homes in the west.
They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below.
'Hello!' he called, his voice echoing alive through the house.
Ursula smiled to herself. HE was frightened of the place too.
'Hello!
Here we are,' she called downstairs.
And they heard him quickly running up.
'This is a ghostly situation,' he said.
'These houses don't have ghosts—they've never had any personality, and only a place with personality can have a ghost,' said Gudrun.
'I suppose so.
Are you both weeping over the past?'
'We are,' said Gudrun, grimly.
Ursula laughed.
'Not weeping that it's gone, but weeping that it ever WAS,' she said.
'Oh,' he replied, relieved.
He sat down for a moment.
There was something in his presence, Ursula thought, lambent and alive.
It made even the impertinent structure of this null house disappear.
'Gudrun says she could not bear to be married and put into a house,' said Ursula meaningful—they knew this referred to Gerald.