rom it. She wished
she could hear from Skrebensky, in answer to her letter, so that
her course should be resolved, she should be engaged in
fulfilling her fate. It was this inactivity which made her
liable to the revulsion she dreaded.

It was curious how little she cared about his not having
written to her before. It was enough that she had sent her
letter. She would get the required answer, that was all.

One afternoon in early October, feeling the seething rising
to madness within her, she slipped out in the rain, to walk
abroad, lest the house should suffocate her. Everywhere was
drenched wet and deserted, the grimed houses glowed dull red,
the butt houses burned scarlet in a gleam of light, under the
glistening, blackish purple slates. Ursula went on towards
Willey Green. She lifted her face and walked swiftly, seeing the
passage of light across the shallow valley, seeing the colliery
and its clouds of steam for a moment visionary in dim
brilliance, away in the chaos of rain. Then the veils closed
again. She was glad of the rain's privacy and intimacy.

Making on towards the wood, she saw the pale gleam of Willey
Water through the cloud below, she walked the open space where
hawthorn trees streamed like hair on the wind and round bushes
were presences slowing through the atmosphere. It was very
splendid, free and chaotic.

Yet she hurried to the wood for shelter. There, the vast
booming overhead vibrated down and encircled her, tree-trunks
spanned the circle of tremendous sound, myriads of tree-trunks,
enormous and streaked black with water, thrust like stanchions
upright between the roaring overhead and the sweeping of the
circle underfoot. She glided between the tree-trunks, afraid of
them. They might turn and shut her in as she went through their
martialled silence.

So she flitted along, keeping an illusion that she was
unnoticed. She felt like a bird that has flown in through the
window of a hall where vast warriors sit at the board. Between
their grave, booming ranks she was hastening, assuming she was
unnoticed, till she emerged, with beating heart, through the far
window and out into the open, upon the vivid green, marshy
meadow.

She turned under the shelter of the common, seeing the great
veils of rain swinging with slow, floating waves across the
landscape. She was very wet and a long way from home, far
enveloped in the rain and the waving landscape. She must beat
her way back through all thi