They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in a daring gown of
vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a
strange black-and-white band round her hair. She was really brilliantly
beautiful and everybody noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded,
gleaming state when he was most handsome. Birkin watched them with
quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head. There
seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, as if
they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the dining-room.
'Don't you love to be in this place?' cried Gudrun. 'Isn't the snow
wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? It is simply
marvellous. One really does feel LIBERMENSCHLICH--more than human.' 'One does,' cried Ursula. 'But isn't that partly the being out of
England?' 'Oh, of course,' cried Gudrun. 'One could never feel like this in
England, for the simple reason that the damper is NEVER lifted off one,
there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I
am assured.' And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was fluttering
with vivid intensity.
'It's quite true,' said Gerald, 'it never is quite the same in England.
But perhaps we don't want it to be--perhaps it's like bringing the
light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let go altogether, in
England. One is afraid what might happen, if EVERYBODY ELSE let go.' 'My God!' cried Gudrun. 'But wouldn't it be wonderful, if all England
did suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.' 'It couldn't,' said Ursula. 'They are all too damp, the powder is damp
in them.' 'I'm not so sure of that,' said Gerald.
'Nor I,' said Birkin. 'When the English really begin to go off, EN
MASSE, it'll be time to shut your ears and run.' 'They never will,' said Ursula.
'We'll see,' he replied.
'Isn't it marvellous,' said Gudrun, 'how thankful one can be, to be out
of one's country. I cannot believe myself, I am so transported, the
moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I say to myself "Here steps a new
creature into life."' 'Don't be too hard on poor old England,' said Gerald. 'Though we curse
it, we love it really.' To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words.
'We may,' said Birkin. 'But it's a damnably uncomfortable love: like a
love for an aged parent who suffers horribly from a complication of
diseases, for which there is no hope.' Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes.