‘No, not for mine. It just injures it,’ said Ursula.

‘Really!’ cried Gudrun.

There was a silence in the room. And Ursula and Birkin could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going.

‘You will go south?’ said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in his voice.

‘Yes,’ said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable hostility between the two men, lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient, since he came abroad, whilst Gerald on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white light, agonistes. The two men revoked one another.

Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula’s bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings, vermilion, cornflower blue, and grey, bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling VERY loving, to give away such treasures.

‘I can’t take them from you, Prune,’ she cried. ‘I can’t possibly deprive you of them—the jewels.’

‘AREN’T they jewels!’ cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with an envious eye. ‘AREN’T they real lambs!’

‘Yes, you MUST keep them,’ said Ursula.

‘I don’t WANT them, I’ve got three more pairs. I WANT you to keep them—I want you to have them. They’re yours, there—’

And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under Ursula’s pillow.

‘One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings,’ said Ursula.

‘One does,’ replied Gudrun; ‘the greatest joy of all.’

And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come for a last talk. Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited in silence.

‘Do you FEEL, Ursula,’ Gudrun began, rather sceptically, that you are going–away–for–ever, never–to–return, sort of thing?’

‘Oh, we shall come back,’ said Ursula. ‘It isn’t a question of train–journeys.’

‘Yes, I know. But spiritually, so to speak, you are going away from us all?’

Ursula quivered.

‘I don’t know a bit what is going to happen,’ she said. ‘I only know we are going somewhere.’

Gudrun waited.

‘And you are glad?’ she asked.

Ursula meditated for a moment.

‘I believe I am VERY glad,’ she replied.

But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister’s face, rather than the uncertain tones of her speech.

‘But don’t you think you’ll WANT the old connection with the world—father and the rest of us, and all that it means, England and the world of thought—don’t you think you’ll NEED that, really to make a world?’