Women in Love

By D. H. Lawrence.

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive.

The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

I

Sisters

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.

“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you really want to get married?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you mean.”

Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.

“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened slightly—“in a better position than you are in now.”

A shadow came over Ursula’s face.

“I might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”

Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.

“You don’t think one needs the experience of having been married?” she asked.

“Do you think it need be an experience?” replied Ursula.

“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. “Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.”

“Not really,” said Ursula. “More likely to be the end of experience.”

Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.

“Of course,” she said, “there’s that to consider.” This brought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost angrily, took up her rubber and began to rub out part of her drawing. Ursula stitched absorbedly.

“You wouldn’t consider a good offer?” asked Gudrun.

“I think I’ve rejected several,” said Ursula.

“Really!” Gudrun flushed dark—“But anything really worth while? Have you really?”

“A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked him awfully,” said Ursula.

“Really! But weren’t you fearfully tempted?”