Women in Love

One evening Gerald was arguing with Loerke about Italy and Tripoli. The

Englishman was in a strange, inflammable state, the German was excited.

It was a contest of words, but it meant a conflict of spirit between

the two men. And all the while Gudrun could see in Gerald an arrogant

English contempt for a foreigner. Although Gerald was quivering, his

eyes flashing, his face flushed, in his argument there was a

brusqueness, a savage contempt in his manner, that made Gudrun's blood

flare up, and made Loerke keen and mortified. For Gerald came down like

a sledge-hammer with his assertions, anything the little German said

was merely contemptible rubbish.

At last Loerke turned to Gudrun, raising his hands in helpless irony, a

shrug of ironical dismissal, something appealing and child-like.

'Sehen sie, gnadige Frau-' he began.

'Bitte sagen Sie nicht immer, gnadige Frau,' cried Gudrun, her eyes

flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid Medusa. Her voice

was loud and clamorous, the other people in the room were startled.

'Please don't call me Mrs Crich,' she cried aloud.

The name, in Loerke's mouth particularly, had been an intolerable

humiliation and constraint upon her, these many days.

The two men looked at her in amazement. Gerald went white at the

cheek-bones.

'What shall I say, then?' asked Loerke, with soft, mocking insinuation.

'Sagen Sie nur nicht das,' she muttered, her cheeks flushed crimson.

'Not that, at least.' She saw, by the dawning look on Loerke's face, that he had understood.

She was NOT Mrs Crich! So-o-, that explained a great deal.

'Soll ich Fraulein sagen?' he asked, malevolently.

'I am not married,' she said, with some hauteur.

Her heart was fluttering now, beating like a bewildered bird. She knew

she had dealt a cruel wound, and she could not bear it.

Gerald sat erect, perfectly still, his face pale and calm, like the

face of a statue. He was unaware of her, or of Loerke or anybody. He

sat perfectly still, in an unalterable calm. Loerke, meanwhile, was

crouching and glancing up from under his ducked head.

Gudrun was tortured for something to say, to relieve the suspense. She

twisted her face in a smile, and glanced knowingly, almost sneering, at

Gerald.

'Truth is best,' she said to him, with a grimace.

But now again she was under his domination; now, because she had dealt

him this blow; because she had destroyed him, and she did not know how

he had taken it. She watched him. He was interesting to her. She had

lost her interest in Loerke.

Gerald rose at length, and went over in a leisurely still movement, to

the Professor. The two began a conversation on Goethe.