hops.
"Antiques"--the very word made her soul fall flat and
dead.

The life went out of her studies, why, she did not know. But
the whole thing seemed sham, spurious; spurious Gothic arches,
spurious peace, spurious Latinity, spurious dignity of France,
spurious naivete of Chaucer. It was a second-hand dealer's shop,
and one bought an equipment for an examination. This was only a
little side-show to the factories of the town. Gradually the
perception stole into her. This was no religious retreat, no
perception of pure learning. It was a little apprentice-shop
where one was further equipped for making money. The college
itself was a little, slovenly laboratory for the factory.

A harsh and ugly disillusion came over her again, the same
darkness and bitter gloom from which she was never safe now, the
realization of the permanent substratum of ugliness under
everything. As she came to the college in the afternoon, the
lawns were frothed with daisies, the lime trees hung tender and
sunlit and green; and oh, the deep, white froth of the daisies
was anguish to see.

For inside, inside the college, she knew she must enter the
sham workshop. All the while, it was a sham store, a sham
warehouse, with a single motive of material gain, and no
productivity. It pretended to exist by the religious virtue of
knowledge. But the religious virtue of knowledge was become a
flunkey to the god of material success.

A sort of inertia came over her. Mechanically, from habit,
she went on with her studies. But it was almost hopeless. She
could scarcely attend to anything. At the Anglo-Saxon lecture in
the afternoon, she sat looking down, out of the window, hearing
no word, of Beowulf or of anything else. Down below, in the
street, the sunny grey pavement went beside the palisade. A
woman in a pink frock, with a scarlet sunshade, crossed the
road, a little white dog running like a fleck of light about
her. The woman with the scarlet sunshade came over the road, a
lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her. Ursula watched
spell-bound. The woman with the scarlet sunshade and the
flickering terrier was gone--and whither? Whither?

In what world of reality was the woman in the pink dress
walking? To what warehouse of dead unreality was she herself
confined?

What good was this place, this college? What good was
Anglo-Saxon, when one only learned it in order to answer
examination questions, in order that one should have a higher
com