Women in Love

So Gudrun strolled the streets with Palmer, or went to the cinema with

him. And his long, pale, rather elegant face flickered as he made his

sarcastic remarks. There they were, the two of them: two elegants in

one sense: in the other sense, two units, absolutely adhering to the

people, teeming with the distorted colliers. The same secret seemed to

be working in the souls of all alike, Gudrun, Palmer, the rakish young

bloods, the gaunt, middle-aged men. All had a secret sense of power,

and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal half-heartedness, a

sort of rottenness in the will.

Sometimes Gudrun would start aside, see it all, see how she was sinking

in. And then she was filled with a fury of contempt and anger. She felt

she was sinking into one mass with the rest--all so close and

intermingled and breathless. It was horrible. She stifled. She prepared

for flight, feverishly she flew to her work. But soon she let go. She

started off into the country--the darkish, glamorous country. The spell

was beginning to work again.