She clenched her hand like
one inspired.
'And one must be willing to suffer--willing to suffer for him hourly,
daily--if you are going to help him, if he is to keep true to anything
at all--'
'And I don't WANT to suffer hourly and daily,' said Ursula. 'I don't, I
should be ashamed. I think it is degrading not to be happy.'
Hermione stopped and looked at her a long time.
'Do you?' she said at last. And this utterance seemed to her a mark of
Ursula's far distance from herself. For to Hermione suffering was the
greatest reality, come what might. Yet she too had a creed of
happiness.
'Yes,' she said. 'One SHOULD be happy--' But it was a matter of will.
'Yes,' said Hermione, listlessly now, 'I can only feel that it would be
disastrous, disastrous--at least, to marry in a hurry. Can't you be
together without marriage? Can't you go away and live somewhere without
marriage? I do feel that marriage would be fatal, for both of you. I
think for you even more than for him--and I think of his health--'
'Of course,' said Ursula, 'I don't care about marriage--it isn't really
important to me--it's he who wants it.
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