Women in Love

Gerald's eyes became hard and strange, and as he went by on his skis he

was more like some powerful, fateful sigh than a man, his muscles

elastic in a perfect, soaring trajectory, his body projected in pure

flight, mindless, soulless, whirling along one perfect line of force.

Luckily there came a day of snow, when they must all stay indoors:

otherwise Birkin said, they would all lose their faculties, and begin

to utter themselves in cries and shrieks, like some strange, unknown

species of snow-creatures.

It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the Reunionsaal talking

to Loerke. The latter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full

of mischievous humour, as usual.

But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too,

the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if

he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection,

against which he was rebelling.

Loerke had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand,

had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun

wanted to talk to Loerke. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his

view of his art. And his figure attracted her. There was the look of a

little wastrel about him, that intrigued her, and an old man's look,

that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a

quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that

marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of

mischievous word-jokes, that were sometimes very clever, but which

often were not. And she could see in his brown, gnome's eyes, the black

look of inorganic misery, which lay behind all his small buffoonery.

His figure interested her--the figure of a boy, almost a street arab.

He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a simple loden suit,

with knee breeches. His legs were thin, and he made no attempt to

disguise the fact: which was of itself remarkable, in a German. And he

never ingratiated himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to

himself, for all his apparent playfulness.

Leitner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very handsome with his

big limbs and his blue eyes. Loerke would go toboganning or skating, in

little snatches, but he was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils,

the nostrils of a pure-bred street arab, would quiver with contempt at

Leitner's splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two

men who had travelled and lived together, sharing the same bedroom, had

now reached the stage of loathing. Leitner hated Loerke with an

injured, writhing, impotent hatred, and Loerke treated Leitner with a

fine-quivering contempt and sarcasm. Soon the two would have to go

apart.