There was a shadowy unreal Ursula,
a whole shadow-play of an unreal life. It was as unreal, and
circumscribed, as a magic-lantern show. She wished the slides could all
be broken. She wished it could be gone for ever, like a lantern-slide
which was broken. She wanted to have no past. She wanted to have come
down from the slopes of heaven to this place, with Birkin, not to have
toiled out of the murk of her childhood and her upbringing, slowly, all
soiled. She felt that memory was a dirty trick played upon her. What
was this decree, that she should 'remember'! Why not a bath of pure
oblivion, a new birth, without any recollections or blemish of a past
life. She was with Birkin, she had just come into life, here in the
high snow, against the stars. What had she to do with parents and
antecedents? She knew herself new and unbegotten, she had no father, no
mother, no anterior connections, she was herself, pure and silvery, she
belonged only to the oneness with Birkin, a oneness that struck deeper
notes, sounding into the heart of the universe, the heart of reality,
where she had never existed before.
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