out, like an infant in the womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange prescience, an intimation of something yet to come. 

 She laid down her work and looked at her sister. She thought Gudrun so charming, so infinitely charming, in her softness and her fine, exquisite richness of texture and delicacy of line. There was a certain playfulness about her too, such a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. Ursula admired her with all her soul. 

 “Why did you come home, Prune?” she asked. 

 Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back from her drawing and looked at Ursula, from under her finely-curved lashes. 

 “Why did I come back, Ursula?” she repeated. “I have asked myself a thousand times.” 

 “And don’t you know?” 

 “Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was just reculer pour mieux sauter.” 

 And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge at Ursula. 

 “I know!” cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsified, and as if she did not know. “But where can one jump to?” 

 “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Gudrun, somewhat superbly. “If one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.” 

 “But isn’t it very risky?” asked Ursula. 

 A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun’s face. 

 “Ah!” she said laughing. “What is it all but words!” And so again she closed the conversation. But Ursula was still brooding. 

 “And how do you find home, now you have come back to it?” she asked. 

 Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answering. Then, in a cold truthful voice, she said: 

 “I find myself completely out of it.” 

 “And father?” 

 Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as if brought to bay. 

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