Women in Love

'It isn't a word of it true, of all this harangue you have made me,'

she replied flatly. 'The horse is a picture of your own stock, stupid

brutality, and the girl was a girl you loved and tortured and then

ignored.' He looked up at her with a small smile of contempt in his eyes. He

would not trouble to answer this last charge.

Gudrun too was silent in exasperated contempt. Ursula WAS such an

insufferable outsider, rushing in where angels would fear to tread. But

then--fools must be suffered, if not gladly.

But Ursula was persistent too.

'As for your world of art and your world of reality,' she replied, 'you

have to separate the two, because you can't bear to know what you are.

You can't bear to realise what a stock, stiff, hide-bound brutality you

ARE really, so you say "it's the world of art." The world of art is

only the truth about the real world, that's all--but you are too far

gone to see it.' She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Loerke sat in stiff

dislike of her. Gerald too, who had come up in the beginning of the

speech, stood looking at her in complete disapproval and opposition. He

felt she was undignified, she put a sort of vulgarity over the

esotericism which gave man his last distinction. He joined his forces

with the other two. They all three wanted her to go away. But she sat

on in silence, her soul weeping, throbbing violently, her fingers

twisting her handkerchief.

The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of Ursula's

obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a voice that was quite

cool and casual, as if resuming a casual conversation: 'Was the girl a model?' 'Nein, sie war kein Modell. Sie war eine kleine Malschulerin.' 'An art-student!' replied Gudrun.

And how the situation revealed itself to her! She saw the girl

art-student, unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too young, her

straight flaxen hair cut short, hanging just into her neck, curving

inwards slightly, because it was rather thick; and Loerke, the

well-known master-sculptor, and the girl, probably well-brought-up, and

of good family, thinking herself so great to be his mistress. Oh how

well she knew the common callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris, or

London, what did it matter? She knew it.

'Where is she now?' Ursula asked.

Loerke raised his shoulders, to convey his complete ignorance and

indifference.

'That is already six years ago,' he said; 'she will be twenty-three

years old, no more good.' Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It attracted

him also. He saw on the pedestal, that the piece was called 'Lady

Godiva.' 'But this isn't Lady Godiva,' he said, smiling good-humouredly. 'She

was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other, who covered herself

with her long hair.' 'A la Maud Allan,' said Gudrun with a mocking grimace.