Page:Women in Love, Lawrence, 1920.djvu/59

Rh "I do think she's impudent."

"Who, Hermione Roddice?" asked Gudrun. "Why?"

"The way she treats one — impudence!"

"Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?" asked Gudrun, rather coldly.

"Her whole manner — oh, it's impossible, the way she tries to bully one. Pure bullying. She's an impudent woman.

'You'll come and see me,' as if we should be falling over ourselves for the privilege."

"I can't understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out about," said Gudrun, in some exasperation. "One knows those women are impudent — these free women who have emancipated themselves from the aristocracy."

"But it is so unnecessary — so vulgar," cried Ursula.

"No, I don't see it. — And if I did — pour moi, elle n'existe pas. I don't grant her the power to be impudent to me."

"Do you think she likes you?" asked Ursula.

"Well, no, I shouldn't think she did."

"Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay with her?"

Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug.

"After all, she's got the sense to know we're not just the ordinary run," said Gudrun.

"Whatever she is, she's not a fool. And I'd rather have somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who keeps to her own set. Hermione Rod- dice does risk herself in some respects."

Ursula pondered this for a time.

"I doubt it," she replied. "Really she risks nothing I suppose we ought to admire her for knowing she can invite us — school teachere — and risk nothing."

"Precisely!" said Gudrun. "Think of the myriads of women that daren't do it. She makes the most of her privileges — that's something. I suppose, really, we should do the same, in her place."

"No," said Ursula. "No. It would bore me. I couldn't spend my time playing her games. It's infra dig."

The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off every thing that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one sharpened against the other.