he said, putting her hand, half
unwillingly, gently on his arm.

He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But he was angry at
the bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He knew she had a passion for
him, really. But it was not finally interesting. There were depths of
passion when one became impersonal and indifferent, unemotional.
Whereas Ursula was still at the emotional personal level-always so
abominably personal. He had taken her as he had never been taken
himself. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame-like a
demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of
the sources of her being, laughing, shrugging, accepting, accepting
finally. As for her, when would she so much go beyond herself as to
accept him at the quick of death?

She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was
soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and
their motives-Gudrun, Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much
interested any more in personalities and in people-people were all
different, but they were all enclosed nowadays in a definite
limitation, he said; there were only about two great ideas, two great
streams of activity remaining, with various forms of reaction
therefrom. The reactions were all varied in various people, but they
followed a few great laws, and intrinsically there was no difference.
They acted and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and
once the laws, the great principles, were known, people were no longer
mystically interesting. They were all essentially alike, the
differences were only variations on a theme. None of them transcended
the given terms.

Ursula did not agree-people were still an adventure to her-but-perhaps
not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was
something mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest
was destructive, her analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was
an under-space in her where she did not care for people and their
idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. She seemed to touch for a moment
this undersilence in herself, she became still, and she turned for a
moment purely to Birkin.

'Won't it be lovely to go home in the dark?' she said. 'We might have
tea rather late-shall we?-and have high tea? Wouldn't that be rather
nice?'

'I promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,' he said.

'But-it doesn't matter-you can go tomorrow-'

'Hermione