Women in Love

'Had the doctor anything new to tell you?' she asked, softly, at

length, with that gentle, timid sympathy which touched a keen fibre in

his heart. He lifted his eyebrows with a negligent, indifferent

expression.

'No--nothing new,' he replied, as if the question were quite casual,

trivial. 'He says the pulse is very weak indeed, very intermittent--but

that doesn't necessarily mean much, you know.' He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and unfolded, with a

stricken look that roused him.

'No,' she murmured at length. 'I don't understand anything about these

things.' 'Just as well not,' he said. 'I say, won't you have a cigarette?--do!'

He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. Then he stood before

her on the hearth again.

'No,' he said, 'we've never had much illness in the house, either--not

till father.' He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her,

with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he

continued: 'It's something you don't reckon with, you know, till it is

there. And then you realise that it was there all the time--it was

always there--you understand what I mean?--the possibility of this

incurable illness, this slow death.' He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette

to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.

'I know,' murmured Gudrun: 'it is dreadful.' He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips,

bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth

spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is

alone, or who is lost in thought.

'I don't know what the effect actually IS, on one,' he said, and again

he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with knowledge,

looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face.

'But I absolutely am not the same. There's nothing left, if you

understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void--and at

the same time you are void yourself. And so you don't know what to DO.' 'No,' she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, almost

pleasure, almost pain. 'What can be done?' she added.

He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great

marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar.

'I don't know, I'm sure,' he replied. 'But I do think you've got to

find some way of resolving the situation--not because you want to, but

because you've GOT to, otherwise you're done. The whole of everything,

and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are

just holding it up with your hands. Well, it's a situation that

obviously can't continue. You can't stand holding the roof up with your

hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you'll HAVE to let go.

Do you understand what I mean? And so something's got to be done, or

there's a universal collapse--as far as you yourself are concerned.' He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel.

He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble

panels of the fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above

him. She felt as if she were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some

horrible and fatal trap.