Women in Love

Gudrun could hear the cattle breathing heavily with helpless fear and

fascination. Oh, they were brave little beasts, these wild Scotch

bullocks, wild and fleecy. Suddenly one of them snorted, ducked its

head, and backed.

'Hue! Hi-eee!' came a sudden loud shout from the edge of the grove. The

cattle broke and fell back quite spontaneously, went running up the

hill, their fleece waving like fire to their motion. Gudrun stood

suspended out on the grass, Ursula rose to her feet.

It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald had cried out to

frighten off the cattle.

'What do you think you're doing?' he now called, in a high, wondering

vexed tone.

'Why have you come?' came back Gudrun's strident cry of anger.

'What do you think you were doing?' Gerald repeated, auto-matically.

'We were doing eurythmics,' laughed Ursula, in a shaken voice.

Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of resentment,

suspended for a few moments. Then she walked away up the hill, after

the cattle, which had gathered in a little, spell-bound cluster higher

up.

'Where are you going?' Gerald called after her. And he followed her up

the hill-side. The sun had gone behind the hill, and shadows were

clinging to the earth, the sky above was full of travelling light.

'A poor song for a dance,' said Birkin to Ursula, standing before her

with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And in another second,

he was singing softly to himself, and dancing a grotesque step-dance in

front of her, his limbs and body shaking loose, his face flickering

palely, a constant thing, whilst his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo,

and his body seemed to hang all loose and quaking in between, like a

shadow.

'I think we've all gone mad,' she said, laughing rather frightened.

'Pity we aren't madder,' he answered, as he kept up the incessant

shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to her and kissed her fingers

lightly, putting his face to hers and looking into her eyes with a pale

grin. She stepped back, affronted.

'Offended--?' he asked ironically, suddenly going quite still and

reserved again. 'I thought you liked the light fantastic.' 'Not like that,' she said, confused and bewildered, almost affronted.

Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by the sight of his loose,

vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to its own dropping and swinging,

and by the pallid, sardonic-smiling face above. Yet automatically she

stiffened herself away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity,

in a man who talked as a rule so very seriously.