give himself to things. But
there are so many things in life that he simply doesn't know. Either he
is not aware of their existence at all, or he dismisses them as merely
negligible--things which are vital to the other person. In a way, he is
not clever enough, he is too intense in spots.'

'Yes,' cried Ursula, 'too much of a preacher. He is really a priest.'

'Exactly! He can't hear what anybody else has to say--he simply cannot
hear. His own voice is so loud.'

'Yes. He cries you down.'

'He cries you down,' repeated Gudrun. 'And by mere force of violence.
And of course it is hopeless. Nobody is convinced by violence. It makes
talking to him impossible--and living with him I should think would be
more than impossible.'

'You don't think one could live with him' asked Ursula.

'I think it would be too wearing, too exhausting. One would be shouted
down every time, and rushed into his way without any choice. He would
want to control you entirely. He cannot allow that there is any other
mind than his own. And then the real clumsiness of his mind is its lack
of self-criticism. No, I think it would be perfectly intolerable.'

'Yes,' assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with Gudrun. 'The
nuisance is,' she said, 'that one would find almost any man intolerable
after a fortnight.'

'It's perfectly dreadful,' said Gudrun. 'But Birkin--he is too
positive. He couldn't bear it if you called your soul your own. Of him
that is strictly true.'

'Yes,' said Ursula. 'You must have HIS soul.'

'Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?' This was all so true,
that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her soul with ugly distaste.

She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through her, in the
most barren of misery.

Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished life off so
thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final. As a matter of fact,
even if it were as Gudrun said, about Birkin, other things were true as
well. But Gudrun would draw two lines under him and cross him out like
an account that is settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled,
done with. And it was such a lie. This finality of Gudrun's, this
dispatching of people and things in a sentence, it was all such a lie.
Ursula began to revolt from her sister.

One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a robin sitting
on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The sisters stood to look
at him. An ironical smile