'Thank you, Mrs Daykin.'
An interrupted silence fell over the two of them, a moment of breach.
'Come and have tea,' he said.
'Yes, I should love it,' she replied, gathering herself together.
They sat facing each other across the tea table.
'I did not say, nor imply, a satellite.
I meant two single equal stars balanced in conjunction—'
'You gave yourself away, you gave away your little game completely,' she cried, beginning at once to eat.
He saw that she would take no further heed of his expostulation, so he began to pour the tea.
'What GOOD things to eat!' she cried.
'Take your own sugar,' he said.
He handed her her cup.
He had everything so nice, such pretty cups and plates, painted with mauve-lustre and green, also shapely bowls and glass plates, and old spoons, on a woven cloth of pale grey and black and purple. It was very rich and fine.
But Ursula could see Hermione's influence.
'Your things are so lovely!' she said, almost angrily.
'I like them.
It gives me real pleasure to use things that are attractive in themselves—pleasant things.
And Mrs Daykin is good.
She thinks everything is wonderful, for my sake.'
'Really,' said Ursula, 'landladies are better than wives, nowadays.
They certainly CARE a great deal more.
It is much more beautiful and complete here now, than if you were married.'
'But think of the emptiness within,' he laughed.
'No,' she said. 'I am jealous that men have such perfect landladies and such beautiful lodgings.
There is nothing left them to desire.'
'In the house-keeping way, we'll hope not.
It is disgusting, people marrying for a home.'
'Still,' said Ursula, 'a man has very little need for a woman now, has he?'
'In outer things, maybe—except to share his bed and bear his children.
But essentially, there is just the same need as there ever was.
Only nobody takes the trouble to be essential.'
'How essential?' she said.
'I do think,' he said, 'that the world is only held together by the mystic conjunction, the ultimate unison between people—a bond.
And the immediate bond is between man and woman.'
'But it's such old hat,' said Ursula. 'Why should love be a bond?
No, I'm not having any.'
'If you are walking westward,' he said, 'you forfeit the northern and eastward and southern direction.
If you admit a unison, you forfeit all the possibilities of chaos.'
'But love is freedom,' she declared.
'Don't cant to me,' he replied. 'Love is a direction which excludes all other directions.
It's a freedom TOGETHER, if you like.'
'No,' she said, 'love includes everything.'
'Sentimental cant,' he replied. 'You want the state of chaos, that's all.
It is ultimate nihilism, this freedom-in-love business, this freedom which is love and love which is freedom.
As a matter of fact, if you enter into a pure unison, it is irrevocable, and it is never pure till it is irrevocable.
And when it is irrevocable, it is one way, like the path of a star.'
'Ha!' she cried bitterly. 'It is the old dead morality.'
'No,' he said, 'it is the law of creation.
One is committed.
One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—for ever.