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not taking real notice of each other. Gudrun was the mother's
favourite--except that Anna always lived in her latest
baby.

The burden of so many lives depending on him wore the youth
down. He had his work in the office, which was done purely by
effort of will: he had his barren passion for the church; he had
three young children. Also at this time his health was not good.
So he was haggard and irritable, often a pest in the house. Then
he was told to go to his woodwork, or to the church.

Between him and the little Ursula there came into being a
strange alliance. They were aware of each other. He knew the
child was always on his side. But in his consciousness he
counted it for nothing. She was always for him. He took it for
granted. Yet his life was based on her, even whilst she was a
tiny child, on her support and her accord.

Anna continued in her violent trance of motherhood, always
busy, often harassed, but always contained in her trance of
motherhood. She seemed to exist in her own violent fruitfulness,
and it was as if the sun shone tropically on her. Her colour was
bright, her eyes full of a fecund gloom, her brown hair tumbled
loosely over her ears. She had a look of richness. No
responsibility, no sense of duty troubled her. The outside,
public life was less than nothing to her, really.

Whereas when, at twenty-six, he found himself father of four
children, with a wife who lived intrinsically like the ruddiest
lilies of the field, he let the weight of responsibility press
on him and drag him. It was then that his child Ursula strove to
be with him. She was with him, even as a baby of four, when he
was irritable and shouted and made the household unhappy. She
suffered from his shouting, but somehow it was not really him.
She wanted it to be over, she wanted to resume her normal
connection with him. When he was disagreeable, the child echoed
to the crying of some need in him, and she responded blindly.
Her heart followed him as if he had some tie with her, and some
love which he could not deliver. Her heart followed him
persistently, in its love.

But there was the dim, childish sense of her own smallness
and inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do
anything, she was not enough. She could not be important to him.
This knowledge deadened her from the first.

Still she set towards him like a quivering needle. All her
life was directed by her awareness of him, her wakefulness to
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