"Desire?" said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. "I can't see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy said to the other, 'You look down the barrel while I pull the trigger, and see what happens?' It seems to me the purest form of accident."
"No," said Ursula. "I couldn't pull the trigger of the emptiest gun in the world, not if some one were looking down the barrel. One instinctively doesn't do it — one can't."
Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement.
"Of course," she said coldly. "If one is a woman, and grown up, one's instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that applies to a couple of boys playing together."
Her voice was cold and angry.
"Yes," persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a woman's voice a few yards off say loudly:
"Oh damn the thing!" They went forward and saw Laura Crich and Hermione Roddice in the field on the other side of the hedge, and Laura Crich struggling with the gate, to get out. Ursula at once hurried up and helped to lift the gate.
"Thanks so much," said Laura, looking up flushed and Amazon-like, yet rather confused. "It isn't right on the hinges."
"No," said Ursula. "And they're so heavy."
"Surprising!" cried Laura.
"How do you do?" sang Hermione, from out of the field, the moment she could make her voice heard. "It's nice now. Are you going for a walk? Yes? Isn't the young green beautiful? So beautiful — quite burning. Good morning — good morning — you'll come and see me? Thank you so much — next week — yes — good-bye, g-o-o-d-b-y-e."
Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving her head up and down, and waving her hand slowly in dismissal, smiling a strange affected smile, making a tall, queer, frightened figure, with her heavy fair hair slipping to her eyes. Then they moved off, as if they had been dismissed like inferiors. The four women parted.
As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her cheeks burning:
