Women in Love

Christmas drew near, all four prepared for flight. Birkin and Ursula

were busy packing their few personal things, making them ready to be

sent off, to whatever country and whatever place they might choose at

last. Gudrun was very much excited. She loved to be on the wing.

She and Gerald, being ready first, set off via London and Paris to

Innsbruck, where they would meet Ursula and Birkin. In London they

stayed one night. They went to the music-hall, and afterwards to the

Pompadour Cafe.

Gudrun hated the Cafe, yet she always went back to it, as did most of

the artists of her acquaintance. She loathed its atmosphere of petty

vice and petty jealousy and petty art. Yet she always called in again,

when she was in town. It was as if she HAD to return to this small,

slow, central whirlpool of disintegration and dissolution: just give it

a look.

She sat with Gerald drinking some sweetish liqueur, and staring with

black, sullen looks at the various groups of people at the tables. She

would greet nobody, but young men nodded to her frequently, with a kind

of sneering familiarity. She cut them all. And it gave her pleasure to

sit there, cheeks flushed, eyes black and sullen, seeing them all

objectively, as put away from her, like creatures in some menagerie of

apish degraded souls. God, what a foul crew they were! Her blood beat

black and thick in her veins with rage and loathing. Yet she must sit

and watch, watch. One or two people came to speak to her. From every

side of the Cafe, eyes turned half furtively, half jeeringly at her,

men looking over their shoulders, women under their hats.

The old crowd was there, Carlyon in his corner with his pupils and his

girl, Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum--they were all there.

Gudrun watched Gerald. She watched his eyes linger a moment on

Halliday, on Halliday's party. These last were on the look-out--they

nodded to him, he nodded again. They giggled and whispered among

themselves. Gerald watched them with the steady twinkle in his eyes.

They were urging the Pussum to something.

She at last rose. She was wearing a curious dress of dark silk splashed

and spattered with different colours, a curious motley effect. She was

thinner, her eyes were perhaps hotter, more disintegrated. Otherwise

she was just the same. Gerald watched her with the same steady twinkle

in his eyes as she came across. She held out her thin brown hand to

him.

'How are you?' she said.

He shook hands with her, but remained seated, and let her stand near

him, against the table. She nodded blackly to Gudrun, whom she did not

know to speak to, but well enough by sight and reputation.