`Did you?' she cried, with her vague radiance.He might have been saying anything whatsoever.She seemed pleased.
`Yes,' he answered.`I wanted to -- I wanted you to agree to marry me.'
She looked at him.His eyes were flickering with mixed lights, wanting something of her, yet not wanting it.She shrank a little, as if she were exposed to his eyes, and as if it were a pain to her.She darkened, her soul clouded over, she turned aside.She had been driven out of her own radiant, single world.And she dreaded contact, it was almost unnatural to her at these times.
`Yes,' she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice.
Birkin's heart contracted swiftly, in a sudden fire of bitterness.It all meant nothing to her.He had been mistaken again.She was in some self-satisfied world of her own.He and his hopes were accidentals, violations to her.
It drove her father to a pitch of mad exasperation.He had had to put up with this all his life, from her.
`Well, what do you say?' he cried.
She winced.Then she glanced down at her father, half-frightened, and she said:
`I didn't speak, did I?' as if she were afraid she might have committed herself.
`No,' said her father, exasperated.`But you needn't look like an idiot.
You've got your wits, haven't you?'
She ebbed away in silent hostility.
`I've got my wits, what does that mean?' she repeated, in a sullen voice of antagonism.
`You heard what was asked you, didn't you?' cried her father in anger.
`Of course I heard.'
`Well then, can't you answer?' thundered her father.
`Why should I?'
At the impertinence of this retort, he went stiff.But he said nothing.
`No,' said Birkin, to help out the occasion, `there's no need to answer at once.You can say when you like.'
Her eyes flashed with a powerful light.
`Why should I say anything?' she cried.`You do this off your own bat, it has nothing to do with me.Why do you both want to bully me?'
`Bully you! Bully you!' cried her father, in bitter, rancorous anger.
`Bully you! Why, it's a pity you can't be bullied into some sense and decency.
Bully you! You'll see to that, you self-willed creature.'
She stood suspended in the middle of the room, her face glimmering and dangerous.She was set in satisfied defiance.Birkin looked up at her.
He too was angry.
`But none is bullying you,' he said, in a very soft dangerous voice also.
`Oh yes,' she cried.`You both want to force me into something.'
`That is an illusion of yours,' he said ironically.
`Illusion!' cried her father.`A self-opinionated fool, that's what she is.'
Birkin rose, saying:
`However, we'll leave it for the time being.'
And without another word, he walked out of the house.
`You fool! You fool!' her father cried to her, with extreme bitterness.
She left the room, and went upstairs, singing to herself.But she was terribly fluttered, as after some dreadful fight.From her window, she could see Birkin going up the road.He went in such a blithe drift of rage, that her mind wondered over him.He was ridiculous, but she was afraid of him.
She was as if escaped from some danger.
Her father sat below, powerless in humiliation and chagrin.It was as if he were possessed with all the devils, after one of these unaccountable conflicts with Ursula.He hated her as if his only reality were in hating her to the last degree.He had all hell in his heart.But he went away, to escape himself.He knew he must despair, yield, give in to despair, and have done.
Ursula's face closed, she completed herself against them all.Recoiling upon herself, she became hard and self-completed, like a jewel.She was bright and invulnerable, quite free and happy, perfectly liberated in her self-possession.Her father had to learn not to see her blithe obliviousness, or it would have sent him mad.She was so radiant with all things, in her possession of perfect hostility.
She would go on now for days like this, in this bright frank state of seemingly pure spontaneity, so essentially oblivious of the existence of anything but herself, but so ready and facile in her interest.Ah it was a bitter thing for a man to be near her, and her father cursed his fatherhood.
But he must learn not to see her, not to know.
She was perfectly stable in resistance when she was in this state: so bright and radiant and attractive in her pure opposition, so very pure, and yet mistrusted by everybody, disliked on every hand.It was her voice, curiously clear and repellent, that gave her away.Only Gudrun was in accord with her.It was at these times that the intimacy between the two sisters was most complete, as if their intelligence were one.They felt a strong, bright bond of understanding between them, surpassing everything else.
And during all these days of blind bright abstraction and intimacy of his two daughters, the father seemed to breathe an air of death, as if he were destroyed in his very being.He was irritable to madness, he could not rest, his daughters seemed to be destroying him.But he was inarticulate and helpless against them.He was forced to breathe the air of his own death.He cursed them in his soul, and only wanted, that they should be removed from him.
They continued radiant in their easy female transcendancy, beautiful to look at.They exchanged confidences, they were intimate in their revelations to the last degree, giving each other at last every secret.They withheld nothing, they told everything, till they were over the border of evil.
And they armed each other with knowledge, they extracted the subtlest flavours from the apple of knowledge.It was curious how their knowledge was complementary, that of each to that of the other.
