“Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?” asked Gudrun, in some surprise. “I can believe quite it hurts your skin—it is terrible. But I thought it was admirable for the soul.”
“No, not for mine. It just injures it,” said Ursula.
“Really!” cried Gudrun.
There was a silence in the room. And Ursula and Birkin could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going.
“You will go south?” said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in his voice.
“Yes,” said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable hostility between the two men, lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient, since he came abroad, whilst Gerald on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white light, agonistes. The two men revoked one another.
Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula’s bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings, vermilion, cornflower blue, and grey, bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling very loving, to give away such treasures.
“I can’t take them from you, Prune,” she cried. “I can’t possibly deprive you of them—the jewels.”
“Aren’t they jewels!” cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with an envious eye. “Aren’t they real lambs!”
“Yes, you must keep them,” said Ursula.