Women in Love

'Was it very vile to be dragged back here again?' Gudrun asked at

length.

Ursula looked up in some bewilderment.

'I never thought of it,' she said.

'I felt a beast, fetching you,' said Gudrun. 'But I simply couldn't see

people. That is too much for me.' 'Yes,' said Ursula, chilled.

Birkin tapped and entered. His face was white and expressionless. She

knew he knew. He gave her his hand, saying: 'The end of THIS trip, at any rate.' Gudrun glanced at him, afraid.

There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be said. At

length Ursula asked in a small voice: 'Have you seen him?' He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did not trouble to

answer.

'Have you seen him?' she repeated.

'I have,' he said, coldly.

Then he looked at Gudrun.

'Have you done anything?' he said.

'Nothing,' she replied, 'nothing.' She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement.

'Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sitting on the

sledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn, that you had words, and Gerald

walked away. What were the words about? I had better know, so that I

can satisfy the authorities, if necessary.' Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with trouble.

'There weren't even any words,' she said. 'He knocked Loerke down and

stunned him, he half strangled me, then he went away.' To herself she was saying: 'A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!' And she turned

ironically away, because she knew that the fight had been between

Gerald and herself and that the presence of the third party was a mere

contingency--an inevitable contingency perhaps, but a contingency none

the less. But let them have it as an example of the eternal triangle,

the trinity of hate. It would be simpler for them.

Birkin went away, his manner cold and abstracted. But she knew he would

do things for her, nevertheless, he would see her through. She smiled

slightly to herself, with contempt. Let him do the work, since he was

so extremely GOOD at looking after other people.

Birkin went again to Gerald. He had loved him. And yet he felt chiefly

disgust at the inert body lying there. It was so inert, so coldly dead,

a carcase, Birkin's bowels seemed to turn to ice. He had to stand and

look at the frozen dead body that had been Gerald.

It was the frozen carcase of a dead male. Birkin remembered a rabbit

which he had once found frozen like a board on the snow. It had been

rigid like a dried board when he picked it up. And now this was Gerald,

stiff as a board, curled up as if for sleep, yet with the horrible

hardness somehow evident. It filled him with horror. The room must be

made warm, the body must be thawed. The limbs would break like glass or

like wood if they had to be straightened.