like a drug. Darkly, without thinking at all, she knew that
she was near to death. She had travelled all her life along the line of
fulfilment, and it was nearly concluded. She knew all she had to know,
she had experienced all she had to experience, she was fulfilled in a
kind of bitter ripeness, there remained only to fall from the tree into
death. And one must fulfil one's development to the end, must carry the
adventure to its conclusion. And the next step was over the border into
death. So it was then! There was a certain peace in the knowledge.

After all, when one was fulfilled, one was happiest in falling into
death, as a bitter fruit plunges in its ripeness downwards. Death is a
great consummation, a consummating experience. It is a development from
life. That we know, while we are yet living. What then need we think
for further? One can never see beyond the consummation. It is enough
that death is a great and conclusive experience. Why should we ask what
comes after the experience, when the experience is still unknown to us?
Let us die, since the great experience is the one that follows now upon
all the rest, death, which is the next great crisis in front of which
we have arrived. If we wait, if we baulk the issue, we do but hang
about the gates in undignified uneasiness. There it is, in front of us,
as in front of Sappho, the illimitable space. Thereinto goes the
journey. Have we not the courage to go on with our journey, must we cry
'I daren't'? On ahead we will go, into death, and whatever death may
mean. If a man can see the next step to be taken, why should he fear
the next but one? Why ask about the next but one? Of the next step we
are certain. It is the step into death.

'I shall die--I shall quickly die,' said Ursula to herself, clear as if
in a trance, clear, calm, and certain beyond human certainty. But
somewhere behind, in the twilight, there was a bitter weeping and a
hopelessness. That must not be attended to. One must go where the
unfaltering spirit goes, there must be no baulking the issue, because
of fear. No baulking the issue, no listening to the lesser voices. If
the deepest desire be now, to go on into the unknown of death, shall
one forfeit the deepest truth for one more shallow?

'Then let it end,' she said to herself. It was a decision. It was not a
question of taking one's life--she would NEVER kill herself, that was
repulsive and violent. It was a question of KNOWING the next step. An