ife, yet remote as peace.

She came to Nottingham in the morning with Gudrun. The two
sisters were distinguished wherever they went, slim, strong
girls, eager and extremely sensitive. Gudrun was the more
beautiful of the two, with her sleepy, half-languid girlishness
that looked so soft, and yet was balanced and inalterable
underneath. She wore soft, easy clothing, and hats which fell by
themselves into a careless grace.

Ursula was much more carefully dressed, but she was
self-conscious, always falling into depths of admiration of
somebody else, and modelling herself upon this other, and so
producing a hopeless incongruity. When she dressed for practical
purposes she always looked well. In winter, wearing a tweed
coat-and-skirt and a small hat of black fur pulled over her
eager, palpitant face, she seemed to move down the street in a
drifting motion of suspense and exceeding sensitive
receptivity.

At the end of the first year Ursula got through her
Intermediate Arts examination, and there came a lull in her
eager activities. She slackened off, she relaxed altogether.
Worn nervous and inflammable by the excitement of the
preparation for the examination, and by the sort of exaltation
which carried her through the crisis itself, she now fell into a
quivering passivity, her will all loosened.

The family went to Scarborough for a month. Gudrun and the
father were busy at the handicraft holiday school there, Ursula
was left a good deal with the children. But when she could, she
went off by herself.

She stood and looked out over the shining sea. It was very
beautiful to her. The tears rose hot in her heart.

Out of the far, far space there drifted slowly in to her a
passionate, unborn yearning. "There are so many dawns that have
not yet risen." It seemed as if, from over the edge of the sea,
all the unrisen dawns were appealing to her, all her unborn soul
was crying for the unrisen dawns.

As she sat looking out at the tender sea, with its lovely,
swift glimmer, the sob rose in her breast, till she caught her
lip suddenly under her teeth, and the tears were forcing
themselves from her. And in her very sob, she laughed. Why did
she cry? She did not want to cry. It was so beautiful that she
laughed. It was so beautiful that she cried.

She glanced apprehensively round, hoping no one would see her
in this state.

Then came a time when the sea was rough. She watched the
water travelling in to the coast, she wat