Women in Love

They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to see the

sunset. In the finely breathing, keen wind they stood and watched the

yellow sun sink in crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks

and ridges glowed with living rose, incandescent like immortal flowers

against a brown-purple sky, a miracle, whilst down below the world was

a bluish shadow, and above, like an annunciation, hovered a rosy

transport in mid-air.

To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted to gather the

glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die. He saw them, saw they

were beautiful. But there arose no clamour in his breast, only a

bitterness that was visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey

and unbeautiful, so that she should not get her support from them. Why

did she betray the two of them so terribly, in embracing the glow of

the evening? Why did she leave him standing there, with the ice-wind

blowing through his heart, like death, to gratify herself among the

rosy snow-tips?

'What does the twilight matter?' he said. 'Why do you grovel before it?

Is it so important to you?' She winced in violation and in fury.

'Go away,' she cried, 'and leave me to it. It is beautiful, beautiful,'

she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. 'It is the most beautiful thing I

have ever seen in my life. Don't try to come between it and me. Take

yourself away, you are out of place--' He stood back a little, and left her standing there, statue-like,

transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose was fading,

large white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forego

everything but the yearning.

'That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,' she said in cold,

brutal tones, when at last she turned round to him. 'It amazes me that

you should want to destroy it. If you can't see it yourself, why try to

debar me?' But in reality, he had destroyed it for her, she was

straining after a dead effect.

'One day,' he said, softly, looking up at her, 'I shall destroy YOU, as

you stand looking at the sunset; because you are such a liar.' There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. She was

chilled but arrogant.

'Ha!' she said. 'I am not afraid of your threats!' She denied herself

to him, she kept her room rigidly private to herself. But he waited on,

in a curious patience, belonging to his yearning for her.

'In the end,' he said to himself with real voluptuous promise, 'when it

reaches that point, I shall do away with her.' And he trembled

delicately in every limb, in anticipation, as he trembled in his most

violent accesses of passionate approach to her, trembling with too much

desire.