t scar or blemish, healthy
without fear of ill health? Is this not the period of manhood
and of joy and fulfilment, after the Resurrection? Who shall be
shadowed by Death and the Cross, being risen, and who shall fear
the mystic, perfect flesh that belongs to heaven?

Can I not, then, walk this earth in gladness, being risen
from sorrow? Can I not eat with my brother happily, and with joy
kiss my beloved, after my resurrection, celebrate my marriage in
the flesh with feastings, go about my business eagerly, in the
joy of my fellows? Is heaven impatient for me, and bitter
against this earth, that I should hurry off, or that I should
linger pale and untouched? Is the flesh which was crucified
become as poison to the crowds in the street, or is it as a
strong gladness and hope to them, as the first flower blossoming
out of the earth's humus?

CHAPTER XII

FIRST LOVE

As Ursula passed from girlhood towards womanhood, gradually
the cloud of self-responsibility gathered upon her. She became
aware of herself, that she was a separate entity in the midst of
an unseparated obscurity, that she must go somewhere, she must
become something. And she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh why must
one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing
responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the
nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of
herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a
direction! But whither? How take even one step? And yet, how
stand still? This was torment indeed, to inherit the
responsibility of one's own life.

The religion which had been another world for her, a glorious
sort of play-world, where she lived, climbing the tree with the
short-statured man, walking shakily on the sea like the
disciple, breaking the bread into five thousand portions, like
the Lord, giving a great picnic to five thousand people, now
fell away from reality, and became a tale, a myth, an illusion,
which, however much one might assert it to be true an historical
fact, one knew was not true--at least, for this
present--day life of ours. There could, within the limits
of this life we know, be no Feeding of the Five Thousand. And
the girl had come to the point where she held that that which
one cannot experience in daily life is not true for oneself.

So, the old duality of life, wherein there had been a weekday
world of people and trains and duties and reports, and besides
that a Sunday