Page:Women in Love, Lawrence, 1920.djvu/52

44 tage, to be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she was taking the man with her, if only in hate.

Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was his turn to bid good-bye, he began to speak again.

"There's the whole difference in the world," he said, "between the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-deliberate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night time, there's always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we get it all in the head, really. You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You've got to do it. You've got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being.

"But we have got such a conceit of ourselves — that's where it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We've got no pride, we're all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-maché" realised selves. We'd rather die than give up our little self-righteous self-opiniated self-will."

There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile and resentful. He sounded as if he were addressing a meeting. Hermione merely paid no attention, stood with her shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike.

Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware of what she was seeing. There was a great physical attractiveness in him — a curious hidden richness, that came through his thinness and his pallor like another voice, conveying another knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of life itself, something like laughter, invisible and satisfying. Also the magic of his thighs had fascinated her: the inner slopes of his thighs. She could not say what it was. But there was a sense of richness and of strong, free liberty.

"But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, aren't we?" she asked, turning to him with a certain golden laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not relax.

"No," he said, "we aren't. We're too full of ourselves."

"Surely it isn't a matter of conceit," she cried.