her
will was still perfect. It almost sent Birkin mad. But he would never,
never dare to break her will, and let loose the maelstrom of her
subconsciousness, and see her in her ultimate madness. Yet he was
always striking at her.

'And of course,' he said to Gerald, 'horses HAVEN'T got a complete
will, like human beings. A horse has no ONE will. Every horse,
strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the
human power completely--and with the other, it wants to be free, wild.
The two wills sometimes lock--you know that, if ever you've felt a
horse bolt, while you've been driving it.'

'I have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,' said Gerald, 'but it
didn't make me know it had two wills. I only knew it was frightened.'

Hermione had ceased to listen. She simply became oblivious when these
subjects were started.

'Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked
Ursula. 'That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it ever
wanted it.'

'Yes it did. It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your
will to the higher being,' said Birkin.

'What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.

'And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside
her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the
other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.'

'Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.

'It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,'
said Birkin. 'The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.'

'Good thing too,' said Ursula.

'Quite,' said Gerald, with a faint smile. 'There's more fun.'

Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song:

'Isn't the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great
sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.'

Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last
impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful
arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking
of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.

'Wouldn't you like a dress,' said Ursula to Hermione, 'of this yellow
spotted with orange--a cotton dress?'

'Yes,' said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the
thought come home to her and soothe her. 'Wouldn't it be pretty? I
should LOVE it.'

And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real