indow and watched the woman carrying the tea up the bank
to the pond. She hated the palaver Hermione made, she wanted to drink
tea, she wanted anything but this fuss and business.

At last they all mounted the grassy bank, to the picnic. Hermione
poured out tea. She ignored now Ursula's presence. And Ursula,
recovering from her ill-humour, turned to Gerald saying:

'Oh, I hated you so much the other day, Mr Crich,'

'What for?' said Gerald, wincing slightly away.

'For treating your horse so badly. Oh, I hated you so much!'

'What did he do?' sang Hermione.

'He made his lovely sensitive Arab horse stand with him at the
railway-crossing whilst a horrible lot of trucks went by; and the poor
thing, she was in a perfect frenzy, a perfect agony. It was the most
horrible sight you can imagine.'

'Why did you do it, Gerald?' asked Hermione, calm and interrogative.

'She must learn to stand--what use is she to me in this country, if she
shies and goes off every time an engine whistles.'

'But why inflict unnecessary torture?' said Ursula. 'Why make her stand
all that time at the crossing? You might just as well have ridden back
up the road, and saved all that horror. Her sides were bleeding where
you had spurred her. It was too horrible--!'

Gerald stiffened.

'I have to use her,' he replied. 'And if I'm going to be sure of her at
ALL, she'll have to learn to stand noises.'

'Why should she?' cried Ursula in a passion. 'She is a living creature,
why should she stand anything, just because you choose to make her? She
has as much right to her own being, as you have to yours.'

'There I disagree,' said Gerald. 'I consider that mare is there for my
use. Not because I bought her, but because that is the natural order.
It is more natural for a man to take a horse and use it as he likes,
than for him to go down on his knees to it, begging it to do as it
wishes, and to fulfil its own marvellous nature.'

Ursula was just breaking out, when Hermione lifted her face and began,
in her musing sing-song:

'I do think--I do really think we must have the COURAGE to use the
lower animal life for our needs. I do think there is something wrong,
when we look on every living creature as if it were ourselves. I do
feel, that it is false to project our own feelings on every animate
creature. It is a lack of discrimination, a lack of criticism.'

'Quite,' said Birkin sharply. 'Nothing is so detestable as the maudlin
attributing of