A hardness came over Gudrun’s face. She did not want to be too definite.

‘When one thinks of other people’s children — ’ said Ursula.

Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile.

‘Exactly,’ she said, to close the conversation.

The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always that strange brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed, contravened. She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last