“Something,” he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his might.
“What?”
He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while she was in this state of opposition.
“There is,” he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; “a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, loving plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman,—so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever—because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.”
Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.
“It is just purely selfish,” she said.
“If it is pure, yes. But it isn’t selfish at all. Because I don’t know what I want of you. I deliver myself over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.”
She pondered along her own line of thought.
“But it is because you love me, that you want me?” she persisted.
“No it isn’t. It is because I believe in you—if I do believe in you.”