He called at the water-keeper's cottage and took the key of the sluice.
They went through a little gate from the high-road, to the head of the water, where was a great stone basin which received the overflow, and a flight of stone steps descended into the depths of the water itself.At the head of the steps was the lock of the sluice-gate.
The night was silver-grey and perfect, save for the scattered restless sound of voices.The grey sheen of the moonlight caught the stretch of water, dark boats plashed and moved.But Ursula's mind ceased to be receptive, everything was unimportant and unreal.
Birkin fixed the iron handle of the sluice, and turned it with a wrench.
The cogs began slowly to rise.He turned and turned, like a slave, his white figure became distinct.Ursula looked away.She could not bear to see him winding heavily and laboriously, bending and rising mechanically like a slave, turning the handle.
Then, a real shock to her, there came a loud splashing of water from out of the dark, tree-filled hollow beyond the road, a splashing that deepened rapidly to a harsh roar, and then became a heavy, booming noise of a great body of water falling solidly all the time.It occupied the whole of the night, this great steady booming of water, everything was drowned within it, drowned and lost.Ursula seemed to have to struggle for her life.She put her hands over her ears, and looked at the high bland moon.
`Can't we go now?' she cried to Birkin, who was watching the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower.It seemed to fascinate him.
He looked at her and nodded.
The little dark boats had moved nearer, people were crowding curiously along the hedge by the high-road, to see what was to be seen.Birkin and Ursula went to the cottage with the key, then turned their backs on the lake.She was in great haste.She could not bear the terrible crushing boom of the escaping water.
`Do you think they are dead?' she cried in a high voice, to make herself heard.
`Yes,' he replied.
`Isn't it horrible!'
He paid no heed.They walked up the hill, further and further away from the noise.
`Do you mind very much?' she asked him.
`I don't mind about the dead,' he said, `once they are dead.The worst of it is, they cling on to the living, and won't let go.'
She pondered for a time.
`Yes,' she said.`The fact of death doesn't really seem to matter much, does it?'
`No,' he said.`What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead?'
`Doesn't it?' she said, shocked.
`No, why should it? Better she were dead -- she'll be much more real.
She'll be positive in death.In life she was a fretting, negated thing.'
`You are rather horrible,' murmured Ursula.
`No! I'd rather Diana Crich were dead.Her living somehow, was all wrong.
As for the young man, poor devil -- he'll find his way out quickly instead of slowly.Death is all right -- nothing better.'
`Yet you don't want to die,' she challenged him.
He was silent for a time.Then he said, in a voice that was frightening to her in its change:
`I should like to be through with it -- I should like to be through with the death process.'
`And aren't you?' asked Ursula nervously.
They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees.Then he said, slowly, as if afraid:
`There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which isn't death.One is tired of the life that belongs to death -- our kind of life.
But whether it is finished, God knows.I want love that is like sleep, like being born again, vulnerable as a baby that just comes into the world.'
Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding what he said.She seemed to catch the drift of his statement, and then she drew away.She wanted to hear, but she did not want to be implicated.She was reluctant to yield there, where he wanted her, to yield as it were her very identity.
`Why should love be like sleep?' she asked sadly.
`I don't know.So that it is like death -- I do want to die from this life -- and yet it is more than life itself.One is delivered over like a naked infant from the womb, all the old defences and the old body gone, and new air around one, that has never been breathed before.'
She listened, making out what he said.She knew, as well as he knew, that words themselves do not convey meaning, that they are but a gesture we make, a dumb show like any other.And she seemed to feel his gesture through her blood, and she drew back, even though her desire sent her forward.
`But,' she said gravely, `didn't you say you wanted something that was not love -- something beyond love?'
He turned in confusion.There was always confusion in speech.Yet it must be spoken.Whichever way one moved, if one were to move forwards, one must break a way through.And to know, to give utterance, was to break a way through the walls of the prison as the infant in labour strives through the walls of the womb.There is no new movement now, without the breaking through of the old body, deliberately, in knowledge, in the struggle to get out.
`I don't want love,' he said.`I don't want to know you.I want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, so we are found different.
One shouldn't talk when one is tired and wretched.One Hamletises, and it seems a lie.Only believe me when I show you a bit of healthy pride and insouciance.I hate myself serious.'
`Why shouldn't you be serious?' she said.
He thought for a minute, then he said, sulkily:
`I don't know.' Then they walked on in silence, at outs.He was vague and lost.
`Isn't it strange,' she said, suddenly putting her hand on his arm, with a loving impulse, `how we always talk like this! I suppose we do love each other, in some way.'
`Oh yes,' he said; `too much.'
She laughed almost gaily.
`You'd have to have it your own way, wouldn't you?' she teased.`You could never take it on trust.'
He changed, laughed softly, and turned and took her in his arms, in the middle of the road.
`Yes,' he said softly.
And he kissed her face and brow, slowly, gently, with a sort of delicate happiness which surprised her extremely, and to which she could not respond.