`If you bite your nails, for example.Then, when you don't want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them.And you would find the habit was broken.'
`Is that so?' said Gerald.
`Yes.And in so many things, I have made myself well.I was a very queer and nervous girl.And by learning to use my will, simply by using my will, I made myself right.'
Ursula looked all the white at Hermione, as she spoke in her slow, dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice.A curious thrill went over the younger woman.
Some strange, dark, convulsive power was in Hermione, fascinating and repelling.
`It is fatal to use the will like that,' cried Birkin harshly, `disgusting.
Such a will is an obscenity.'
Hermione looked at him for a long time, with her shadowed, heavy eyes.
Her face was soft and pale and thin, almost phosphorescent, her jaw was lean.
`I'm sure it isn't,' she said at length.There always seemed an interval, a strange split between what she seemed to feel and experience, and what she actually said and thought.She seemed to catch her thoughts at length from off the surface of a maelstrom of chaotic black emotions and reactions, and Birkin was always filled with repulsion, she caught so infallibly, her will never failed her.Her voice was always dispassionate and tense, and perfectly confident.Yet she shuddered with a sense of nausea, a sort of seasickness that always threatened to overwhelm her mind.But her mind remained unbroken, her will was still perfect.It almost sent Birkin mad.
But he would never, never dare to break her will, and let loose the maelstrom of her subconsciousness, and see her in her ultimate madness.Yet he was always striking at her.
`And of course,' he said to Gerald, `horses haven't got a complete will, like human beings.A horse has no one will.Every horse, strictly, has two wills.With one will, it wants to put itself in the human power completely -- and with the other, it wants to be free, wild.The two wills sometimes lock -- you know that, if ever you've felt a horse bolt, while you've been driving it.'
`I have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,' said Gerald, `but it didn't make me know it had two wills.I only knew it was frightened.'
Hermione had ceased to listen.She simply became oblivious when these subjects were started.
`Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked Ursula.
`That is quite incomprehensible to me.I don't believe it ever wanted it.'
`Yes it did.It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your will to the higher being,' said Birkin.
`What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.
`And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her.With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly.With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.'
`Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.
`It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,'
said Birkin.`The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.'
`Good thing too,' said Ursula.
`Quite,' said Gerald, with a faint smile.`There's more fun.'
Hermione could bear no more.She rose, saying in her easy sing-song:
`Isn't the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.'
Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last impersonal depths.And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful arrogance.
She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.
`Wouldn't you like a dress,' said Ursula to Hermione, `of this yellow spotted with orange -- a cotton dress?'
`Yes,' said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the thought come home to her and soothe her.`Wouldn't it be pretty? I should love it.'
And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real affection.
But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to the bottom, to know what he meant by the dual will in horses.A flicker of excitement danced on Gerald's face.
