“Really,” said Ursula, “this room couldn’t be sacred, could it?”
Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes.
“Impossible,” she replied.
“When I think of their lives—father’s and mother’s, their love, and their marriage, and all of us children, and our bringing-up—would you have such a life, Prune?”
“I wouldn’t, Ursula.”
“It all seems so nothing—their two lives—there’s no meaning in it. Really, if they had not met, and not married, and not lived together—it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?”
“Of course—you can’t tell,” said Gudrun.
“No. But if I thought my life was going to be like it—Prune,” she caught Gudrun’s arm, “I should run.”
Gudrun was silent for a few moments.
“As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary life—one cannot contemplate it,” replied Gudrun. “With you, Ursula, it is quite different. You will be out of it all, with Birkin. He’s a special case. But with the ordinary man, who has his life fixed in one place, marriage is just impossible. There may be, and there are, thousands of women who want it, and could conceive of nothing else. But the very thought of it sends me mad. One must be free, above all, one must be free. One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one must not become 7, Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or Shortlands. No man will be sufficient to make that good—no man! To marry, one must have a free lance, or nothing, a comrade-in-arms, a Glücksritter. A man with a position in the social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!”