He was silent for some moments.
'Well,' he said, 'if you know beforehand you couldn't stand it, you're safe.'
'Quite!' said Gudrun.
'Why DOES every woman think her aim in life is to have a hubby and a little grey home in the west?
Why is this the goal of life?
Why should it be?' said Ursula.
'Il faut avoir le respect de ses btises,' said Birkin.
'But you needn't have the respect for the BETISE before you've committed it,' laughed Ursula.
'Ah then, des betises du papa?'
'Et de la maman,' added Gudrun satirically.
'Et des voisins,' said Ursula.
They all laughed, and rose.
It was getting dark.
They carried the things to the car.
Gudrun locked the door of the empty house.
Birkin had lighted the lamps of the automobile.
It all seemed very happy, as if they were setting out.
'Do you mind stopping at Coulsons.
I have to leave the key there,' said Gudrun.
'Right,' said Birkin, and they moved off.
They stopped in the main street.
The shops were just lighted, the last miners were passing home along the causeways, half-visible shadows in their grey pit-dirt, moving through the blue air.
But their feet rang harshly in manifold sound, along the pavement.
How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and enter the car, and be borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula and Birkin!
What an adventure life seemed at this moment!
How deeply, how suddenly she envied Ursula!
Life for her was so quick, and an open door—so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that was gone and the world to come were nothing to her.
Ah, if she could be JUST LIKE THAT, it would be perfect.
For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt a want within herself.
She was unsure.
She had felt that now, at last, in Gerald's strong and violent love, she was living fully and finally.
But when she compared herself with Ursula, already her soul was jealous, unsatisfied.
She was not satisfied—she was never to be satisfied.
What was she short of now?
It was marriage—it was the wonderful stability of marriage.
She did want it, let her say what she might. She had been lying.
The old idea of marriage was right even now—marriage and the home.
Yet her mouth gave a little grimace at the words.
She thought of Gerald and Shortlands—marriage and the home!
Ah well, let it rest!
He meant a great deal to her—but—! Perhaps it was not in her to marry.
She was one of life's outcasts, one of the drifting lives that have no root.
No, no it could not be so.
She suddenly conjured up a rosy room, with herself in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in evening dress who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed her.
This picture she entitled
'Home.'
It would have done for the Royal Academy.
'Come with us to tea—DO,' said Ursula, as they ran nearer to the cottage of Willey Green.
'Thanks awfully—but I MUST go in—' said Gudrun. She wanted very much to go on with Ursula and Birkin.
That seemed like life indeed to her.