Women in Love

And she clung close to Birkin. Suddenly she realised she did not know

what he was thinking. She did not know where he was ranging.

'My love!' she said, stopping to look at him.

His face was pale, his eyes dark, there was a faint spark of starlight

on them. And he saw her face soft and upturned to him, very near. He

kissed her softly.

'What then?' he asked.

'Do you love me?' she asked.

'Too much,' he answered quietly.

She clung a little closer.

'Not too much,' she pleaded.

'Far too much,' he said, almost sadly.

'And does it make you sad, that I am everything to you?' she asked,

wistful. He held her close to him, kissing her, and saying, scarcely

audible: 'No, but I feel like a beggar--I feel poor.' She was silent, looking at the stars now. Then she kissed him.

'Don't be a beggar,' she pleaded, wistfully. 'It isn't ignominious that

you love me.' 'It is ignominious to feel poor, isn't it?' he replied.

'Why? Why should it be?' she asked. He only stood still, in the

terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the mountain tops, folding

her round with his arms.

'I couldn't bear this cold, eternal place without you,' he said. 'I

couldn't bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.' She kissed him again, suddenly.

'Do you hate it?' she asked, puzzled, wondering.

'If I couldn't come near to you, if you weren't here, I should hate it.

I couldn't bear it,' he answered.

'But the people are nice,' she said.

'I mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternality,' he said.

She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nestling unconscious in

him.

'Yes, it is good we are warm and together,' she said.

And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights of the hotel

glowing out in the night of snow-silence, small in the hollow, like a

cluster of yellow berries. It seemed like a bunch of sun-sparks, tiny

and orange in the midst of the snow-darkness. Behind, was a high shadow

of a peak, blotting out the stars, like a ghost.

They drew near to their home. They saw a man come from the dark

building, with a lighted lantern which swung golden, and made that his

dark feet walked in a halo of snow. He was a small, dark figure in the

darkened snow. He unlatched the door of an outhouse. A smell of cows,

hot, animal, almost like beef, came out on the heavily cold air. There

was a glimpse of two cattle in their dark stalls, then the door was

shut again, and not a chink of light showed. It had reminded Ursula

again of home, of the Marsh, of her childhood, and of the journey to

Brussels, and, strangely, of Anton Skrebensky.