Yet a certain perversity would not let her.
'Do come—yes, it would be so nice,' pleaded Ursula.
'I'm awfully sorry—I should love to—but I can't—really—'
She descended from the car in trembling haste.
'Can't you really!' came Ursula's regretful voice.
'No, really I can't,' responded Gudrun's pathetic, chagrined words out of the dusk.
'All right, are you?' called Birkin.
'Quite!' said Gudrun. 'Good-night!'
'Good-night,' they called.
'Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,' called Birkin.
'Thank you very much,' called Gudrun, in the strange, twanging voice of lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to him.
She turned away to her cottage gate, and they drove on.
But immediately she stood to watch them, as the car ran vague into the distance.
And as she went up the path to her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible bitterness.
In her parlour was a long-case clock, and inserted into its dial was a ruddy, round, slant-eyed, joyous-painted face, that wagged over with the most ridiculous ogle when the clock ticked, and back again with the same absurd glad-eye at the next tick.
All the time the absurd smooth, brown-ruddy face gave her an obtrusive 'glad-eye.'
She stood for minutes, watching it, till a sort of maddened disgust overcame her, and she laughed at herself hollowly.
And still it rocked, and gave her the glad-eye from one side, then from the other, from one side, then from the other.
Ah, how unhappy she was!
In the midst of her most active happiness, ah, how unhappy she was!
She glanced at the table.
Gooseberry jam, and the same home-made cake with too much soda in it!
Still, gooseberry jam was good, and one so rarely got it.
All the evening she wanted to go to the Mill.
But she coldly refused to allow herself.
She went the next afternoon instead.
She was happy to find Ursula alone.
It was a lovely, intimate secluded atmosphere.
They talked endlessly and delightedly.
'Aren't you FEARFULLY happy here?' said Gudrun to her sister glancing at her own bright eyes in the mirror.
She always envied, almost with resentment, the strange positive fullness that subsisted in the atmosphere around Ursula and Birkin.
How really beautifully this room is done,' she said aloud. 'This hard plaited matting—what a lovely colour it is, the colour of cool light!'
And it seemed to her perfect.
'Ursula,' she said at length, in a voice of question and detachment, 'did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested our going away all together at Christmas?'
'Yes, he's spoken to Rupert.'
A deep flush dyed Gudrun's cheek.
She was silent a moment, as if taken aback, and not knowing what to say.
'But don't you thing,' she said at last, 'it is AMAZINGLY COOL !'
Ursula laughed.
'I like him for it,' she said.
Gudrun was silent.
It was evident that, whilst she was almost mortified by Gerald's taking the liberty of making such a suggestion to Birkin, yet the idea itself attracted her strongly.
'There's rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,' said Ursula, 'so defiant, somehow!
Oh, I think he's VERY lovable.'
Gudrun did not reply for some moments.
She had still to get over the feeling of insult at the liberty taken with her freedom.
'What did Rupert say—do you know?' she asked.
'He said it would be most awfully jolly,' said Ursula.
Again Gudrun looked down, and was silent.
'Don't you think it would?' said Ursula, tentatively.