‘And aren’t you?’ asked Ursula nervously.

They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. Then he said, slowly, as if afraid:

‘There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which isn’t death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death — our kind of life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I want love that is like sleep, like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into the world.’

Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding what he said. She seemed to catch the drift of his statement, and then she drew away. She wanted to hear, but she did not want to be implicated. She was reluctant to yield there, where he wanted her, to yield as it were her very identity.