d herself at once. 'Does he
want to protect himself, or does he think I would not go alone?' She
was tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect himself. But at
the end of all, she only said to herself:

'I don't want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to say something
more to me. So I shan't tell Gudrun anything about it, and I shall go
alone. Then I shall know.'

She found herself sitting on the tram-car, mounting up the hill going
out of the town, to the place where he had his lodging. She seemed to
have passed into a kind of dream world, absolved from the conditions of
actuality. She watched the sordid streets of the town go by beneath
her, as if she were a spirit disconnected from the material universe.
What had it all to do with her? She was palpitating and formless within
the flux of the ghost life. She could not consider any more, what
anybody would say of her or think about her. People had passed out of
her range, she was absolved. She had fallen strange and dim, out of the
sheath of the material life, as a berry falls from the only world it
has ever known, down out of the sheath on to the real unknown.

Birkin was standing in the middle of the room, when she was shown in by
the landlady. He too was moved outside himself. She saw him agitated
and shaken, a frail, unsubstantial body silent like the node of some
violent force, that came out from him and shook her almost into a
swoon.

'You are alone?' he said.

'Yes--Gudrun could not come.'

He instantly guessed why.

And they were both seated in silence, in the terrible tension of the
room. She was aware that it was a pleasant room, full of light and very
restful in its form--aware also of a fuchsia tree, with dangling
scarlet and purple flowers.

'How nice the fuchsias are!' she said, to break the silence.

'Aren't they! Did you think I had forgotten what I said?'

A swoon went over Ursula's mind.

'I don't want you to remember it--if you don't want to,' she struggled
to say, through the dark mist that covered her.

There was silence for some moments.

'No,' he said. 'It isn't that. Only--if we are going to know each
other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a
relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and
infallible about it.'

There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did
not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have
spoken.

Seeing she was