contracted, as if at any minute she might be precipitated to
the ground. She was afraid.
She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inured to this violation of a dark, uncreated, hostile world. But all the time her heart was crying, as if in the midst of some ordeal: "I want to go back, I want to go away, I want not to know it, not to know that this exists." Yet she must go forward.
Ursula could feel her suffering.
"You hate this, don't you?" she asked.
"It bewilders me," stammered Gudrun.
"You won't stay long," replied Ursula.
And Gudrun went along, grasping at release.
They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve of the hill, into the purer country of the other side, towards Willey Green. Still the faint glamour of blackness persisted over the fields and the wooded hills, and seemed darkly to gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge-bottoms, and in the cottage gardens of Willey Green, currant-bushes were breaking into leaf, and little flowers were coming white on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone walls.
Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between high banks towards the church. There, in the lowest bend of the road, low under the trees, stood a little group of expectant people, waiting to see the wedding. The daughter of the chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, was getting married to a naval officer.
"Let us go back," said Gudrun, swerving away. "There are all those people."
And she hung wavering in the road.
"Never mind them," said Ursula, "they're all right. They all know me, they don't matter."
"But must we go through them?" asked Gudrun.
"They're quite all right, really," said Ursula, going forward. And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, watchful common people. They were chiefly women, collier's wives of the more shiftless sort. They had watchful, underworld faces.
