`And what will happen when you find yourself in space?' she cried in derision. `After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there. You above everybody can't get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing, in space as well as on earth.'
`No,' said Ursula, `it isn't. Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love. It isn't so merely human.'
Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes. She admired and despised her sister so much, both! Then, suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglily:
`Well, I've got no further than love, yet.'
Over Ursula's mind flashed the thought: `Because you never have loved, you can't get beyond it.'
Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck.
`Go and find your new world, dear,' she said, her voice clanging with false benignity. `After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of Rupert's Blessed Isles.'
Her arm rested round Ursula's neck, her fingers on Ursula's cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfortable meanwhile. There was an insult in Gudrun's protective patronage that was really too hurting. Feeling her sister's resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow, and disclosed the stockings again.
`Ha -- ha!' she laughed, rather hollowly. `How we do talk indeed -- new worlds and old --!'
And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects.
Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the sledge to overtake them, conveying the departing guests.
`How much longer will you stay here?' asked Birkin, glancing up at Gerald's very red, almost blank face.
`Oh, I can't say,' Gerald replied. `Till we get tired of it.'
`You're not afraid of the snow melting first?' asked Birkin.
Gerald laughed.
`Does it melt?' he said.
`Things are all right with you then?' said Birkin.
Gerald screwed up his eyes a little.
`All right?' he said. `I never know what those common words mean. All right and all wrong, don't they become synonymous, somewhere?'
`Yes, I suppose. How about going back?' asked Birkin.
`Oh, I don't know. We may never get back. I don't look before and after,' said Gerald.
`Nor pine for what is not,' said Birkin.
Gerald looked into the distance, with the small-pupilled, abstract eyes of a hawk.