One morning, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen were working and conversing in the window bay of their father's Beldover home. Gudrun was sketching on a board that she was holding on her knee while Ursula worked on a piece of vibrantly colored embroidery. They spoke occasionally while remaining largely silent as their thoughts wandered. Gudrun questioned, "Don't you really WANT to get married, Ursula?" Ursula set down her stitching and raised her head. Her features were composed and thoughtful. I'm not sure, she said. Depending on what you mean, Gudrun was a little surprised. She spent a while observing her sister. Ironically, she responded, "Well, it typically implies one thing! In any case, don't you think you'd be in a better position than you are right now? she said, her face growing slightly darker. Ursula's face began to cast a shadow. I might, she admitted. But I'm not certain. Gudrun waited once more, her irritation growing. She wished to be quite specific. She questioned, "You don't think one needs the experience of having been married?" Ursula asked, "Do you think it needs to BE an experience?" In a calm tone, Gudrun remarked, "Bound to be, in some way or another." Though possibly unpleasant, there will undoubtedly be some form of experience. Not really, Ursula replied. More probable, the experience's end. Gudrun sat motionless as she took care of this. Of course, she continued, "There's THAT to think about." The dialogue ended as a result. Gudrun grabbed her rubber and started rubbing away at her drawing in an almost enraged manner. Ursula meticulously sewn. Gudrun questioned, "You wouldn't consider a good offer?" I believe I've turned down a few, Ursula remarked. 'REALLY!' But is there truly anything worthwhile? Gudrun blushed darkly. are you serious? "A thousand a year and a really nice guy," he said. I really liked him, Ursula said. 'Really! But weren't you tempted in a scary way?" Ursula responded, "In the abstract, but not in the concrete." When it comes down to it, one isn't even tempted; if I were, I'd get married right now. I simply feel the want to resist. Both sisters' smiles quickly sprang on their faces. Isn't it wonderful how strong the temptation is to resist? exclaimed Gudrun. They exchanged glances while laughing. They were terrified deep down. There was a protracted lull while Gudrun continued her sketch and Ursula embroidered. Ursula, who was twenty-six, and Gudrun, who was twenty-five, were sisters. However, rather than looking like Hebe's sisters, both had the distant, virgin appearance of contemporary girls. Gudrun has soft-skinned, soft-limbed, passive beauty. She was dressed in a dark-blue silky dress with emerald-green stockings and ruches of blue and green linen lace around the neck and sleeves. Ursula's sensitive expectancy was in stark contrast to her confident yet reserved demeanor. Gudrun's flawless joie de vivre and exclusive bareness of manner startled the locals, who referred to her as "a smart woman" because of it. She had recently returned from London, where she had spent several years studying, working, and attending an art school. Gudrun abruptly caught her underlip in her teeth and muttered, "I was hoping for a man to come along," with an odd grimace that was equal parts sly smile and sorrow. Ursula felt anxious. She asked, laughing, "So you came home expecting him here." Gudrun exclaimed, 'Oh my dear,' 'I wouldn't go out of my way to look for him. But if a sufficiently wealthy, extraordinarily gorgeous person were to appear, well—well," she cynically trailed off. She then gave Ursula a probing glance as if to question her. Doesn't it seem like you get bored sometimes? she questioned her sister. Don't you notice that things never come to pass? NADA MATERIALIZES! Everything dies in its youth. What withers in the bud, Ursula questioned. Oh, oneself, things in general, everything. There was a pause while each sister hazarded a guess as to what would happen. Ursula responded, "It does frighten one," after another pause. But do you think getting married will advance your career? Gudrun remarked, "It seems to be the logical next step." With a hint of resentment, Ursula thought about this. She had been a class mistress at Willey Green Grammar School for a number of years. I know, she acknowledged, "when one thinks in the abstract, it seems like that. But truly picture it: picture any male you know greeting you at the door every night with a kiss and saying, "Hello." There was a pause. Gudrun said with a shrunken voice, "Yes." It's simply not doable. It is impossible because of the man. Of course there are kids, Ursula answered hesitantly. Gudrun become more inflexible. Do you REALLY want kids, Ursula? she sternly questioned. Ursula's face took on a bewildered, dazed expression. She said, "One feels it is still beyond one." Do you feel that way, Gudrun questioned. "I feel absolutely nothing even thinking about having kids." Gudrun's expressionless visage resembled a mask as she regarded Ursula. The woman knit her brows. Maybe it's not real, she hesitated. Maybe one merely wants them on the surface—not genuinely in their soul. Gudrun's face began to get rigid. She didn't want to be overly certain. Ursula remarked, "When one considers other people's children—" Gudrun gave her sister another stern look. She concluded by saying, "Exactly," to end the discussion. Ursula always had the peculiar brightness of an intrinsic spark that is captured, meshed, or contravened while the two sisters labored in quiet. She spent a lot of her time by herself and by herself, working and going about her daily activities while always reflecting and attempting to grasp life in her own words. She had stopped doing anything active, yet something was happening in the shadows. If only she could get beyond the remaining defenses! Like a baby in the womb, she appeared to try to extend her hands, but she was unable to do so at this time. Still, she possessed an odd precognition that hinted at future events. She put her work down and turned to face her sister. In her softness, delicate, exquisite richness of texture, and delicacy of line, she found Gudrun to be infinitely charming. She also had a particular whimsical quality, such a hint of irony or piquancy, and such an unbroken reserve. She was someone who Ursula admired deeply. Prune, why did you return home? she enquired. Gudrun was aware of admiration for her. She took a seat back from her sketch and peered at Ursula through her delicately arched eyelashes. She asked again, "Why did I come back, Ursula?" Many times, I have asked myself that question. And you don't know? "Yes, I believe I do," I believe that returning home was just RECULER POUR MIEUX SAUTER. She then gave Ursula a knowing glance that was slow and deliberate. Ursula said, "I know!," while appearing slightly dazed, feigned, and as if she did not know. But to where can one leap? Oh, it doesn't matter, Gudrun remarked, in a quite excellent manner. "If one jumps over the edge, one must land somewhere," the saying goes. But isn't it really risky, Ursula questioned. Gudrun's face started to smile mockingly slowly. She exclaimed, "What is it all but words?" while grinning. She then ended the conversation once more. But Ursula continued to ruminate. And now that you've returned, how do you locate home? she questioned. Before responding, Gudrun made a brief, icy pause. I find myself entirely out of it, she replied, in a chilly, sincere tone.

And your father? Gudrun gave Ursula an almost resentful look as though she had been brought to heel. She responded coldly, "I haven't thought about him: I've refrained." Ursula hesitated before answering, "Yes," signaling that the exchange had ended. The sisters felt as though they had gazed over the edge and were met by a void, a scary gap. For a while, they labored in silence; Gudrun's cheek was flushed with suppressed emotion. She was angry that it had been summoned. She suggested in an overly casual tone, "Shall we go out and look at that wedding?" Ursula exclaimed, "Yes!" too excitedly, setting down her needlework and leaping up as if to flee from something, revealing the stress of the circumstance and getting on Gudrun's nerves with a friction of disapproval. Ursula was aware of the surroundings as she made her way upstairs in the house and in her own home. She despised the filthy, overly familiar place! She was terrified by the intensity of her feelings toward the house, the neighborhood, the overall climate, and the state of this antiquated life. She was alarmed by how she felt. The two girls were soon moving quickly down Beldover's main street, a broad avenue with some businesses and residences but no signs of poverty. Gudrun withdrew brutally from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands, new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex. However, she continued on, moving forward across the entire vile range of pettiness and the lengthy, amorphous, grimy roadway. She went through a period of agony while being open to every stare. It was odd that she had decided to return and see how this formless, barren ugliness affected her personally. Why did she want to commit herself to this abominable agony by these ugly, useless people and this desecrated landscape? Why does she still want to submit herself to this torture? She was laboring in the sand like a bug. She felt repulsed by everything. They made a left turn off the main road and passed by a smoky common garden where cabbage stumps stood brazenly. Nobody considered feeling humiliated. Nobody felt ashamed of anything. Gudrun remarked, "It's like a country in the underworld. The colliers shovel it up and bring it with them above ground. It's amazing, Ursula, it's truly amazing—it's a great, different world. Everything is ghostly, and the people are all ghouls. Everything in the real world is a horrifying imitation; it is all filthy and disgusting. It makes you feel crazy, Ursula. The sisters were moving across a filthy, pitch-black field on a dark route. A vast landscape could be seen on the left, including a valley with collieries and adjacent hills with cornfields and woods, all of which were darkened by distance and appeared to be seen through a crape veil. Stable columns of white and black smoke appeared in the darkness, casting a spell. Long rows of houses in straight lines along the brow of the hill began to approach in close proximity, curving up the hillside. They had fragile red brick exteriors and dark slate roofs. The sisters were walking on a dark path that had been worn down by frequent colliers and was separated from the field by iron railings; the stile that went back into the road had been polished by the passing miners' moleskins. The two females were currently moving between some rows of modest homes. Children yelled insults while women stood at the end of their block conversing with their arms folded over their coarse aprons and gazing after the Brangwen sisters with that long, unceasing gaze of Australian aborigines. Gudrun walked out in a stupor. What was her own world outside if this were human life, if these were human beings living in a whole universe? She was conscious of her grass-green stockings, her big velour hat in the same color, and her full, plush coat, which was a bright blue. Her heart was in her throat, and she had the unsettling sensation that she was treading on air. She felt as if she may fall to the ground at any moment. She felt uneasy. She clung on Ursula, who had become accustomed to this violation of a hostile, uncreated universe via repeated use. Her heart, however, was sobbing continuously as if she were going through a trying situation: "I want to go back, I want to leave, I want to not know it, I want to not know that this exists." But she has to move ahead. Ursula sensed her anguish. You detest this, right? she questioned. It baffles me, Gudrun mumbled. You won't remain for very long, Ursula retorted. Gudrun followed suit while struggling for freedom. They moved out from the colliery area, around the hill's curve, onto the purer land on the other side, and in the direction of Willey Green. Still, a hazy blackness lingered over the farms and forested hills, appearing to shine in the darkness. It was a chilly spring day with brief periods of brightness. In Willey Green's cottage gardens, currant bushes were beginning to turn leafy, and tiny white flowers were appearing on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone walls. Yellow celandines also emerged from the bottoms of the hedges. Turning, they moved down the highroad that passed through high banks in the direction of the church. A small group of eager individuals were waiting to see the wedding there on the road's lowest bend, low under the trees. The district's top mine owner, Thomas Crich, was having his daughter married to a naval officer. Let's go back, Gudrun remarked, veering off. "All of those people are there." She then hung hesitantly in the street. They're OK, Ursula remarked, so disregard them. They are all aware of me and are irrelevant. Gudrun questioned, "But must we go through them?" Really, they're fine, replied Ursula as she moved forward. The two sisters then approached the throng of anxious, wary commoners jointly. The more shiftless type of colliers' wives made up the majority of the group. They had eerie, watching expressions. The two sisters kept their bodies rigid and moved swiftly in the direction of the gate. The women gave them a small amount of room, as though reluctantly giving them the upper hand. The girls walked silently up the steps and through the stone gate while a police officer counted their steps and estimated their speed. A voice behind Gudrun said, "What price the stockings!" The girl was suddenly overcome by a tremendous, homicidal rage. She wanted them all destroyed and removed from the planet so that it was left empty for her. She detested moving forward in their line of sight as she walked up the graveyard path and along the crimson carpet. She abruptly declared, "I won't go into the church," with such conviction that Ursula was forced to stop, turn around, and take a short side route that went to the little private gate of the Grammar School, whose grounds were next to the church's. Ursula took a brief rest on the low stone wall beneath the laurel bushes just inside the school's shrubbery gate, outside the churchyard. Behind her, the calmly rising enormous red structure of the school with its wide windows could be seen. The old church's light roofs and tower were visible over the shrubbery in front of her. The vegetation had veiled the sisters. Gudrun took a seat motionless. Her face was turned away, her mouth tightly closed. She was profoundly remorseful that she had ever returned. Ursula turned red as she stared at her, thinking how stunningly lovely she was. However, she imposed a limitation on Ursula's character in the form of fatigue. Ursula desired solitude in order to escape Gudrun's presence's confinement and constriction.

Gudrun questioned, "Are we going to stay here?" Ursula stood up and retorted, "I was only resting for a minute." We'll stand on the fives court corner, where we'll have a good view of everything. For the time being, the sun shone brightly into the churchyard. A faint aroma of sap and of spring, possibly of violets from the tombs, could be detected. There were several angelic-looking white daisies in bloom. The copper-beech tree's expanding leaves were blood-red in the air. The carriages started to arrive promptly at eleven o'clock. Wedding guests were descending the steps and walking along the red carpet to the church when there was a commotion in the crowd at the entrance and a moment of focus as a carriage pulled up. The fact that the sun was shining made them all gay and happy. Gudrun kept a careful eye on them out of pure curiosity. Each one was seen by her as a fully realized individual, similar to a character in a novel, a subject in a painting, or a puppet in a theater. She enjoyed identifying their varied traits, putting them in their proper context, providing them with their own surroundings, and setting them down for good as they passed in front of her on the walk to the church. She was aware that they had been completed for her, sealed, stamped, and done. Before the Criches started to show up, there was nothing that was unsettled or unknown. Then she became intrigued. This was something that wasn't quite so predetermined. Gerald Crich, the mother's eldest son, and Mrs. Crich arrived. Despite the obvious attempts to bring her into line for the day, she cut a strange, untidy figure. She leaned slightly forward and had a pale, yellowish face with clear, transparent skin. Her features were well-defined and attractive, and she had a tense, predatory expression. She had unruly colorless hair that was falling out from behind her blue silk bonnet and onto her dark blue silk satchel coat. She had a monomaniacal appearance that was somewhat furtive but overwhelmingly proud. Her son was of the fair, tanned kind, slightly taller than average, well-built, and almost excessively well-dressed. But he also had a peculiar, guarded look and an unconscious glimmer about him, as if he were not a part of the same creation as those around him. Gudrun immediately lighted on him. She was drawn to him because of something about him that was northern. His fair hair and clear northern skin had a sheen to them that resembled sunlight reflecting off of ice crystals. He also appeared to be as fresh, untainted, and arctic in nature. He might have been thirty years old or older. She could see through his sparkling beauty and manliness, which made him seem like a young, jovial, smiling wolf, the menacing stillness in his bearing and the looming threat of his uncontrollable temper. She kept saying to herself, "His totem is the wolf." His mother is a wolf that is elderly and unbroken. She then felt a sharp paroxysm, a transfer, as if she had found some tremendous revelation that no one else on planet was aware of. Her entire body was taken over by a strange conveyance, and her veins began to throb violently. She muttered to herself, "Good God, what is this?" Following that, she confidently declared, "I shall know more of that man." She was tormented by a need to see him again, a nostalgia, and a desire to do so in order to confirm that she had not imagined everything, that she was not actually experiencing this strange and overwhelming sensation on his account, this knowledge of him in her core, and this strong apprehension of him. Is there truly a pale gold, arctic light that surrounds only the two of us? she questioned to herself. "Am I REALLY singled out for him in some way?" she questioned. She remained in a trance, barely aware of what was going on around her, since she could not believe it. The bridegroom was absent, but the bridesmaids were present. Ursula questioned whether anything was wrong and whether the wedding would ultimately fail. She experienced distress, as though it were her fault. The lead bridesmaids had shown up. Ursula observed them ascend the stairs. One of them, a tall, sluggish, reticent woman with weighty fair hair and a pale, long face, was someone she was familiar with. It was the Criches' pal Hermione Roddice. Now she came up, holding her head high and carrying a huge flat hat made of pale yellow velvet with streaks of natural and gray ostrich feathers on it. Her long, white face was raised up so she wouldn't have to look out at the world as she slid ahead as though hardly conscious. She had money. She carried a large number of tiny rose-colored cyclamens and wore a garment made of soft, fragile velvet in a pale yellow color. Her hair was heavy, her shoes and stockings were brownish gray, just like the feathers on her hat, and she walked with an odd fixation of the hips and an odd hesitant motion. She was striking with her exquisite pale yellow and brownish rose coloring, but she also had a ghastly, unappealing quality. When she passed, people were stunned, aroused, and ready to jeer but were kept mute for some reason. Her long, pale face, which she carried high up in a Rossetti-esque manner, appeared almost intoxicated, as though she were trapped inside a bizarre mass of thoughts from which she was unable to free herself. Ursula was enthralled as she observed her. She knew her to some extent. She was the Midlands' most extraordinary woman. She was a woman of the new school, full of knowledge and heavy on the nerves from consciousness, unlike her father, a Derbyshire Baronet of the old school. She had a deep desire for change, and she gave her soul to the greater good. But the world of men gripped her because she was a man's lady. She engaged in a variety of mind- and soul-intimate relationships with strong guys. Only Rupert Birkin, one of the county's school inspectors, was one of these guys that Ursula knew. Gudrun, though, had met others in London. Gudrun had already made a good number of acquaintances who were well-known and respected from all spheres of society as she moved around with her artist buddies. Hermione had twice met her, but the two had never clicked. After getting to know one other on equal terms in the homes of various acquaintances in the town, it would be strange for them to cross paths again here in the Midlands, where their social standing was so distinct. Gudrun had acquaintances among the lax aristocracy who are interested in the arts since she had been a social success. Hermione was aware of her impeccable appearance and that she was socially superior to everyone she would likely encounter in Willey Green, if not on a par with them. She was aware of her acceptance in the intellectual and cultural worlds. She served as a KULTURTRAGER—a conduit for ideas culture. She was at one with everything that was best, whether it be in society, thought, public action, or even art. She moved among the elite and felt at home with them. Because she was among the first and those who opposed her were inferior to her in terms of position, riches, or elevated associations of thinking, growth, and understanding, no one could denigrate her or mock her. This made her immune to harm. She had spent her entire life trying to become untouchable, untouchable, and immune to the criticism of others.