skin. If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous,
passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you
want is pornography--looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your
naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your
consciousness, make it all mental.'

There was a sense of violation in the air, as if too much was said, the
unforgivable. Yet Ursula was concerned now only with solving her own
problems, in the light of his words. She was pale and abstracted.

'But do you really WANT sensuality?' she asked, puzzled.

Birkin looked at her, and became intent in his explanation.

'Yes,' he said, 'that and nothing else, at this point. It is a
fulfilment--the great dark knowledge you can't have in your head--the
dark involuntary being. It is death to one's self--but it is the coming
into being of another.'

'But how? How can you have knowledge not in your head?' she asked,
quite unable to interpret his phrases.

'In the blood,' he answered; 'when the mind and the known world is
drowned in darkness everything must go--there must be the deluge. Then
you find yourself a palpable body of darkness, a demon--'

'But why should I be a demon--?' she asked.

'"WOMAN WAILING FOR HER DEMON LOVER"--' he quoted--'why, I don't know.'