responsibility, she would leave it to him.
When they were alone in the darkness, she felt the strange, licentiousness of him hovering upon her. She was troubled and repelled. Why should he turn like this?
‘What is it?’ she asked in dread.
But his face only glistened on her, unknown, horrible. And yet she was fascinated. Her impulse was to repel him violently, break from this spell of mocking brutishness. But she was too fascinated, she wanted to submit, she wanted to know. What would he do to her?
He was so attractive, and so repulsive at one. The sardonic suggestivity that flickered over his face and looked from his narrowed eyes, made her want to hide, to hide herself away from him and watch him from somewhere unseen.
‘Why are you like this?’ she demanded again, rousing against him with sudden force and animosity.
The flickering fires in his eyes concentrated as he looked into her eyes. Then the lids drooped with a faint motion of satiric contempt. Then they rose again to the same remorseless suggestivity. And she gave way, he might do as he would. His licentiousness was repulsively attractive. But he was self-responsible, she would see what it was.
They might do as they liked—this she realised as she went to sleep. How could anything that gave one satisfaction be excluded? What was degrading? Who cared? Degrading things were real, with a different reality. And he was so unabashed and unrestrained. Wasn’t it rather horrible, a man who could be so soulful and spiritual, now to be so—she balked at her own thoughts and memories: then she added—so bestial? So bestial, they two!—so degraded! She winced. But after all, why not? She exulted as well. Why not be bestial, and go the whole round of experience? She exulted in it. She was bestial. How good it was to be really shameful! There would be no shameful thing she had not experienced. Yet she was unabashed, she was herself. Why not? She was free, when she knew everything, and no dark shameful things were denied her.
Gudrun, who had been watching Gerald in the Reunionsaal, suddenly thought:
‘He should have all the women he can—it is his nature. It is absurd to call him monogamous—he is naturally promiscuous. That is his nature.’
The thought came to her involuntarily. It shocked her somewhat. It was as if she had seen some new MENE! MENE! upon the wall. Yet it was merely true. A voice seemed to have spoken it to her so clearly, that for the moment she believed in inspiration.
‘It is really true,’ she said to herself again.
She knew quite well she had believed it all along. She knew it implicitly. But she must keep it dark—almost from herself. She must keep it completely secret. It was knowledge for her alone, and scarcely even to be admitted to herself.
The deep resolve formed in her, to combat him. One of them must triumph over the other. Which should it be? Her soul steeled itself with strength. Almost she laughed within herself, at her confidence. It woke a certain keen, half contemptuous pity, tenderness for him: she was so ruthless.
Everybody retired early. The Professor and Loerke went into a small lounge to drink. They both watched Gudrun go along the landing by the railing upstairs.
‘Ein schones Frauenzimmer,’ said the Professor.
‘Ja!’ asserted Loerke, shortly.
Gerald walked with his queer, long wolf-steps across the bedroom to the window, stooped and looked out, then rose again, and turned to Gudrun, his eyes sharp with an abstract smile. He seemed very tall to her, she saw the glisten of his whitish eyebrows, that met between his brows.
‘How do you like it?’ he said.
He seemed to be laughing inside himself, quite unconsciously. She looked at him. He was a phenomenon to her, not a human being: a sort of creature, greedy.
‘I like it very much,’ she replied.
‘Who do you like best downstairs?’ he asked, standing tall and glistening above her, with his glistening stiff hair erect.
‘Who do I like best?’ she repeated, wanting to answer his question, and finding it difficult to collect herself. ‘Why I don’t know, I don’t know enough about them yet, to be able to say. Who do YOU like best?’
‘Oh, I don’t care—I don’t like or dislike any of them. It doesn’t matter about me. I wanted to know about you.’
‘But why?’ she asked, going rather pale. The abstract, unconscious smile in his eyes was intensified.
‘I wanted to know,’ he said.
She turned aside, breaking the spell. In some strange way, she felt he was getting power over her.
‘Well, I can’t tell you already,’ she said.
She went to the mirror to take out the hairpins from her hair. She stood before the mirror every night for some minutes, brushing her fine dark hair. It was part of the inevitable ritual of her life.
He followed her, and stood behind her. She was busy with bent head, taking out the pins and shaking her warm hair loose. When she looked up, she saw him in the glass standing behind her, watching unconsciously, not consciously seeing her, and yet watching, with finepupilled eyes that SEEMED to smile, and which were not really smiling.
She started. It took all her courage for her to continue brushing her hair, as usual, for her to pretend she was at her ease. She was far, far from being at her ease with him. She beat her brains wildly for something to say to him.
‘What are your plans for tomorrow?’ she asked nonchalantly, whilst her heart was beating so furiously, her eyes were so bright with strange nervousness, she felt he could not but observe. But she knew also that he was
