`But why inflict unnecessary torture?' said Ursula. `Why make her stand all that time at the crossing? You might just as well have ridden back up the road, and saved all that horror. Her sides were bleeding where you had spurred her. It was too horrible --!'

Gerald stiffened.

`I have to use her,' he replied. `And if I'm going to be sure of her at all, she'll have to learn to stand noises.'

`Why should she?' cried Ursula in a passion. `She is a living creature, why should she stand anything, just because you choose to make her? She has as much right to her own being, as you have to yours.'

`There I disagree,' said Gerald. `I consider that mare is there for my use. Not because I bought her, but because that is the natural order. It is more natural for a man to take a horse and use it as he likes, than for him to go down on his knees to it, begging it to do as it wishes, and to fulfil its own marvellous nature.'

Ursula was just breaking out, when Hermione lifted her face and began, in her musing sing-song:

`I do think -- I do really think we must have the courage to use the lower animal life for our needs. I do think there is something wrong, when we look on every living creature as if it were ourselves. I do feel, that it is false to project our own feelings on every animate creature. It is a lack of discrimination, a lack of criticism.'

`Quite,' said Birkin sharply. `Nothing is so detestable as the maudlin attributing of human feelings and consciousness to animals.'

`Yes,' said Hermione, wearily, `we must really take a position. Either we are going to use the animals, or they will use us.'

`That's a fact,' said Gerald. `A horse has got a will like a man, though it has no mind strictly. And if your will isn't master, then the horse is master of you. And this is a thing I can't help. I can't help being master of the horse.'

`If only we could learn how to use our will,' said Hermione, `we could do anything. The will can cure anything, and put anything right. That I am convinced of -- if only we use the will properly, intelligibly.'

`What do you mean by using the will properly?' said Birkin.

`A very great doctor taught me,' she said, addressing Ursula and Gerald vaguely. `He told me for instance, that to cure oneself of a bad habit, one should force oneself to do it, when one would not do it -- make oneself do it -- and then the habit would disappear.'

`How do you mean?' said Gerald.

`If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don't want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. And you would find the habit was broken.'

`Is that so?' said Gerald.

`Yes. And in so many things, I have made myself well. I was a very queer and nervous girl. And by learning to use my will, simply by using my will, I made myself right.'

Ursula looked all the white at Hermione, as she spoke in her slow, dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice. A curious thrill went over the younger woman. Some strange, dark, convulsive power was in Hermione, fascinating and repelling.