'After all, she's got the sense to know we're not just the ordinary
run,' said Gudrun. 'Whatever she is, she's not a fool. And I'd rather
have somebody I detested, than the ordinary woman who keeps to her own
set. Hermione Roddice does risk herself in some respects.' Ursula pondered this for a time.
'I doubt it,' she replied. 'Really she risks nothing. I suppose we
ought to admire her for knowing she CAN invite us--school teachers--and
risk nothing.' 'Precisely!' said Gudrun. 'Think of the myriads of women that daren't
do it. She makes the most of her privileges--that's something. I
suppose, really, we should do the same, in her place.' 'No,' said Ursula. 'No. It would bore me. I couldn't spend my time
playing her games. It's infra dig.' The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything
that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one
sharpened against the other.
'Of course,' cried Ursula suddenly, 'she ought to thank her stars if we
will go and see her. You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand times more
beautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand times
more beautifully dressed, for she never looks fresh and natural, like a
flower, always old, thought-out; and we ARE more intelligent than most
people.' 'Undoubtedly!' said Gudrun.
'And it ought to be admitted, simply,' said Ursula.
'Certainly it ought,' said Gudrun. 'But you'll find that the really
chic thing is to be so absolutely ordinary, so perfectly commonplace
and like the person in the street, that you really are a masterpiece of
humanity, not the person in the street actually, but the artistic
creation of her--' 'How awful!' cried Ursula.
'Yes, Ursula, it IS awful, in most respects. You daren't be anything
that isn't amazingly A TERRE, SO much A TERRE that it is the artistic
creation of ordinariness.' 'It's very dull to create oneself into nothing better,' laughed Ursula.
'Very dull!' retorted Gudrun. 'Really Ursula, it is dull, that's just
the word. One longs to be high-flown, and make speeches like Corneille,
after it.' Gudrun was becoming flushed and excited over her own cleverness.
'Strut,' said Ursula. 'One wants to strut, to be a swan among geese.' 'Exactly,' cried Gudrun, 'a swan among geese.' 'They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,' cried Ursula, with
mocking laughter. 'And I don't feel a bit like a humble and pathetic
ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese--I can't help it. They
make one feel so. And I don't care what THEY think of me. FE M'EN
FICHE.' Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike.