“And I don’t want to suffer hourly and daily,” said Ursula. “I don’t, I should be ashamed. I think it is degrading not to be happy.”
Hermione stopped and looked at her a long time.
“Do you?” she said at last. And this utterance seemed to her a mark of Ursula’s far distance from herself. For to Hermione suffering was the greatest reality, come what might. Yet she too had a creed of happiness.
“Yes,” she said. “One should be happy—” But it was a matter of will.
“Yes,” said Hermione, listlessly now, “I can only feel that it would be disastrous, disastrous—at least, to marry in a hurry. Can’t you be together without marriage? Can’t you go away and live somewhere without marriage? I do feel that marriage would be fatal, for both of you. I think for you even more than for him—and I think of his health—”
“Of course,” said Ursula, “I don’t care about marriage—it isn’t really important to me—it’s he who wants it.”
“It is his idea for the moment,” said Hermione, with that weary finality, and a sort of si jeunesse savait infallibility.
There was a pause. Then Ursula broke into faltering challenge.
“You think I’m merely a physical woman, don’t you?”
“No indeed,” said Hermione. “No, indeed! But I think you are vital and young—it isn’t a question of years, or even of experience—it is almost a question of race. Rupert is race-old, he comes of an old race—and you seem to me so young, you come of a young, inexperienced race.”