Women in Love

'Yes,' she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. 'Yes,'

and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she

was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could

not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and

gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved.

She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked

by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse,

that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.

Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and

full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff

old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and

rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was

uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the diningroom,

sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a

power, a presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention.

The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on

evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian

Contessa wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in

soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work,

Ursula was in yellow with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of

grey, crimson and jet, Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a

sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours

under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk going on,

ceaselessly, Joshua's voice dominating; of the ceaseless pitter-patter

of women's light laughter and responses; of the brilliant colours and

the white table and the shadow above and below; and she seemed in a

swoon of gratification, convulsed with pleasure and yet sick, like a

REVENANT. She took very little part in the conversation, yet she heard

it all, it was all hers.

They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they were one

family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. Fraulein handed the

coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or else long warden pipes of white

clay, of which a sheaf was provided.

'Will you smoke?--cigarettes or pipe?' asked Fraulein prettily. There

was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century

appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander

tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione

strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all

dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in

the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that

flickered on the marble hearth.