Women in Love

When they had finished tea, the two girls sat on, silent and serene.

Then Ursula, who had a beautiful strong voice, began to sing to

herself, softly: 'Annchen von Tharau.' Gudrun listened, as she sat

beneath the trees, and the yearning came into her heart. Ursula seemed

so peaceful and sufficient unto herself, sitting there unconsciously

crooning her song, strong and unquestioned at the centre of her own

universe. And Gudrun felt herself outside. Always this desolating,

agonised feeling, that she was outside of life, an onlooker, whilst

Ursula was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of her own

negation, and made her, that she must always demand the other to be

aware of her, to be in connection with her.

'Do you mind if I do Dalcroze to that tune, Hurtler?' she asked in a

curious muted tone, scarce moving her lips.

'What did you say?' asked Ursula, looking up in peaceful surprise.

'Will you sing while I do Dalcroze?' said Gudrun, suffering at having

to repeat herself.

Ursula thought a moment, gathering her straying wits together.

'While you do--?' she asked vaguely.

'Dalcroze movements,' said Gudrun, suffering tortures of

self-consciousness, even because of her sister.

'Oh Dalcroze! I couldn't catch the name. DO--I should love to see you,'

cried Ursula, with childish surprised brightness. 'What shall I sing?' 'Sing anything you like, and I'll take the rhythm from it.' But Ursula could not for her life think of anything to sing. However,

she suddenly began, in a laughing, teasing voice: 'My love--is a high-born lady--' Gudrun, looking as if some invisible chain weighed on her hands and

feet, began slowly to dance in the eurythmic manner, pulsing and

fluttering rhythmically with her feet, making slower, regular gestures

with her hands and arms, now spreading her arms wide, now raising them

above her head, now flinging them softly apart, and lifting her face,

her feet all the time beating and running to the measure of the song,

as if it were some strange incantation, her white, rapt form drifting

here and there in a strange impulsive rhapsody, seeming to be lifted on

a breeze of incantation, shuddering with strange little runs. Ursula

sat on the grass, her mouth open in her singing, her eyes laughing as

if she thought it was a great joke, but a yellow light flashing up in

them, as she caught some of the unconscious ritualistic suggestion of

the complex shuddering and waving and drifting of her sister's white

form, that was clutched in pure, mindless, tossing rhythm, and a will

set powerful in a kind of hypnotic influence.