'Exactly,' she said, to close the conversation.

The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always that strange
brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed, contravened.
She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from
day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp
it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but
underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she
could break through the last integuments! She seemed to try and put her
hands 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