Women in Love

'But why does he do it?' cried Ursula, 'why does he? Does he think he's

grand, when he's bullied a sensitive creature, ten times as sensitive

as himself?' Again there was a cautious pause. Then again the man shook his head, as

if he would say nothing, but would think the more.

'I expect he's got to train the mare to stand to anything,' he replied.

'A pure-bred Harab--not the sort of breed as is used to round

here--different sort from our sort altogether. They say as he got her

from Constantinople.' 'He would!' said Ursula. 'He'd better have left her to the Turks, I'm

sure they would have had more decency towards her.' The man went in to drink his can of tea, the girls went on down the

lane, that was deep in soft black dust. Gudrun was as if numbed in her

mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down

into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of

the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure

control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and

thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into

unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.

On the left, as the girls walked silently, the coal-mine lifted its

great mounds and its patterned head-stocks, the black railway with the

trucks at rest looked like a harbour just below, a large bay of

railroad with anchored wagons.

Near the second level-crossing, that went over many bright rails, was a

farm belonging to the collieries, and a great round globe of iron, a

disused boiler, huge and rusty and perfectly round, stood silently in a

paddock by the road. The hens were pecking round it, some chickens were

balanced on the drinking trough, wagtails flew away in among trucks,

from the water.

On the other side of the wide crossing, by the road-side, was a heap of

pale-grey stones for mending the roads, and a cart standing, and a

middle-aged man with whiskers round his face was leaning on his shovel,

talking to a young man in gaiters, who stood by the horse's head. Both

men were facing the crossing.

They saw the two girls appear, small, brilliant figures in the near

distance, in the strong light of the late afternoon. Both wore light,

gay summer dresses, Ursula had an orange-coloured knitted coat, Gudrun

a pale yellow, Ursula wore canary yellow stockings, Gudrun bright rose,

the figures of the two women seemed to glitter in progress over the

wide bay of the railway crossing, white and orange and yellow and rose

glittering in motion across a hot world silted with coal-dust.