Women in Love

'It is Gerald Crich,' said Ursula.

'I know,' replied Gudrun.

And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washed

up and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separate

element he saw them and he exulted to himself because of his own

advantage, his possession of a world to himself. He was immune and

perfect. He loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violent

impulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him up. He

could see the girls watching him a way off, outside, and that pleased

him. He lifted his arm from the water, in a sign to them.

'He is waving,' said Ursula.

'Yes,' replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved again, with a strange

movement of recognition across the difference.

'Like a Nibelung,' laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, only stood

still looking over the water.

Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side

stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters,

which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new

element, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with

his legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, just

himself in the watery world.

Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of

pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that

she felt herself as if damned, out there on the high-road.

'God, what it is to be a man!' she cried.

'What?' exclaimed Ursula in surprise.

'The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!' cried Gudrun, strangely

flushed and brilliant. 'You're a man, you want to do a thing, you do

it. You haven't the THOUSAND obstacles a woman has in front of her.' Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun's mind, to occasion this outburst.

She could not understand.

'What do you want to do?' she asked.

'Nothing,' cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. 'But supposing I did.

Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one of

the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump

in. But isn't it RIDICULOUS, doesn't it simply prevent our living!' She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled.

The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between the

trees just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dim

and glamorous in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before the

windows. Gudrun seemed to be studying it closely.