Women in Love

Already they were rarely together. Leitner ran attaching himself to

somebody or other, always deferring, Loerke was a good deal alone. Out

of doors he wore a Westphalian cap, a close brown-velvet head with big

brown velvet flaps down over his ears, so that he looked like a

lop-eared rabbit, or a troll. His face was brown-red, with a dry,

bright skin, that seemed to crinkle with his mobile expressions. His

eyes were arresting--brown, full, like a rabbit's, or like a troll's,

or like the eyes of a lost being, having a strange, dumb, depraved look

of knowledge, and a quick spark of uncanny fire. Whenever Gudrun had

tried to talk to him he had shied away unresponsive, looking at her

with his watchful dark eyes, but entering into no relation with her. He

had made her feel that her slow French and her slower German, were

hateful to him. As for his own inadequate English, he was much too

awkward to try it at all. But he understood a good deal of what was

said, nevertheless. And Gudrun, piqued, left him alone.

This afternoon, however, she came into the lounge as he was talking to

Ursula. His fine, black hair somehow reminded her of a bat, thin as it

was on his full, sensitive-looking head, and worn away at the temples.

He sat hunched up, as if his spirit were bat-like. And Gudrun could see

he was making some slow confidence to Ursula, unwilling, a slow,

grudging, scanty self-revelation. She went and sat by her sister.

He looked at her, then looked away again, as if he took no notice of

her. But as a matter of fact, she interested him deeply.

'Isn't it interesting, Prune,' said Ursula, turning to her sister,

'Herr Loerke is doing a great frieze for a factory in Cologne, for the

outside, the street.' She looked at him, at his thin, brown, nervous hands, that were

prehensile, and somehow like talons, like 'griffes,' inhuman.

'What IN?' she asked.

'AUS WAS?' repeated Ursula.

'GRANIT,' he replied.

It had become immediately a laconic series of question and answer

between fellow craftsmen.

'What is the relief?' asked Gudrun.

'Alto relievo.' 'And at what height?' It was very interesting to Gudrun to think of his making the great

granite frieze for a great granite factory in Cologne. She got from him

some notion of the design. It was a representation of a fair, with

peasants and artisans in an orgy of enjoyment, drunk and absurd in

their modern dress, whirling ridiculously in roundabouts, gaping at

shows, kissing and staggering and rolling in knots, swinging in

swing-boats, and firing down shooting galleries, a frenzy of chaotic

motion.