“No,” she said. “I am jealous that men have such perfect landladies and such beautiful lodgings. There is nothing left them to desire.”
“In the house-keeping way, we’ll hope not. It is disgusting, people marrying for a home.”
“Still,” said Ursula, “a man has very little need for a woman now, has he?”
“In outer things, maybe—except to share his bed and bear his children. But essentially, there is just the same need as there ever was. Only nobody takes the trouble to be essential.”
“How essential?” she said.
“I do think,” he said, “that the world is only held together by the mystic conjunction, the ultimate unison between people—a bond. And the immediate bond is between man and woman.”
“But it’s such old hat,” said Ursula. “Why should love be a bond? No, I’m not having any.”
“If you are walking westward,” he said, “you forfeit the northern and eastward and southern direction. If you admit a unison, you forfeit all the possibilities of chaos.”
“But love is freedom,” she declared.
“Don’t cant to me,” he replied. “Love is a direction which excludes all other directions. It’s a freedom together, if you like.”