Women in Love

She did not want things to materialise, to take any definite shape. She

wanted, suddenly, at one moment of the journey tomorrow, to be wafted

into an utterly new course, by some utterly unforeseen event, or

motion. So that, although she wanted to go out with Loerke for the last

time into the snow, she did not want to be serious or businesslike.

And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown velvet cap, that made

his head as round as a chestnut, with the brown-velvet flaps loose and

wild over his ears, and a wisp of elf-like, thin black hair blowing

above his full, elf-like dark eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin

crinkling up into odd grimaces on his small-featured face, he looked an

odd little boy-man, a bat. But in his figure, in the greeny loden suit,

he looked CHETIF and puny, still strangely different from the rest.

He had taken a little toboggan, for the two of them, and they trudged

between the blinding slopes of snow, that burned their now hardening

faces, laughing in an endless sequence of quips and jests and polyglot

fancies. The fancies were the reality to both of them, they were both

so happy, tossing about the little coloured balls of verbal humour and

whimsicality. Their natures seemed to sparkle in full interplay, they

were enjoying a pure game. And they wanted to keep it on the level of a

game, their relationship: SUCH a fine game.

Loerke did not take the toboganning very seriously. He put no fire and

intensity into it, as Gerald did. Which pleased Gudrun. She was weary,

oh so weary of Gerald's gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke

let the sledge go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a

bend, he pitched both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for

them both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, to be

laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew he would be making ironical,

playful remarks as he wandered in hell--if he were in the humour. And

that pleased her immensely. It seemed like a rising above the

dreariness of actuality, the monotony of contingencies.

They played till the sun went down, in pure amusement, careless and

timeless. Then, as the little sledge twirled riskily to rest at the

bottom of the slope, 'Wait!' he said suddenly, and he produced from somewhere a large

thermos flask, a packet of Keks, and a bottle of Schnapps.

'Oh Loerke,' she cried. 'What an inspiration! What a COMBLE DE JOIE

INDEED! What is the Schnapps?' He looked at it, and laughed.