s you, you bring your rage
here."

He relapsed into silence. Ursula knew that he was wrong. In
the outside, upper world, he was wrong. Already came over the
child the cold sense of the impersonal world. There she knew her
mother was right. But still her heart clamoured after her
father, for him to be right, in his dark, sensuous underworld.
But he was angry, and went his way in blackness and brutal
silence again.

The child ran about absorbed in life, quiet, full of
amusement. She did not notice things, nor changes nor
alterations. One day she would find daisies in the grass,
another day, apple-blossoms would be sprinkled white on the
ground, and she would run among it, for pleasure because it was
there. Yet again birds would be pecking at the cherries, her
father would throw cherries down from the tree all round her on
the garden. Then the fields were full of hay.

She did not remember what had been nor what would be, the
outside things were there each day. She was always herself, the
world outside was accidental. Even her mother was accidental to
her: a condition that happened to endure.

Only her father occupied any permanent position in the
childish consciousness. When he came back she remembered vaguely
how he had gone away, when he went away she knew vaguely that
she must wait for his coming back. Whereas her mother, returning
from an outing, merely became present, there was no reason for
connecting her with some previous departure.

The return or the departure of the father was the one event
which the child remembered. When he came, something woke up in
her, some yearning. She knew when he was out of joint or
irritable or tired: then she was uneasy, she could not rest.

When he was in the house, the child felt full and warm, rich
like a creature in the sunshine. When he was gone, she was
vague, forgetful. When he scolded her even, she was often more
aware of him than of herself. He was her strength and her
greater self.

Ursula was three years old when another baby girl was born.
Then the two small sisters were much together, Gudrun and
Ursula. Gudrun was a quiet child who played for hours alone,
absorbed in her fancies. She was brown-haired, fair-skinned,
strangely placid, almost passive. Yet her will was indomitable,
once set. From the first she followed Ursula's lead. Yet she was
a thing to herself, so that to watch the two together was
strange. They were like two young animals playing together bu