‘I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that!’ she said. ‘I am ugly enough, aren’t I?’
He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimating eye.
‘You are beautiful,’ he said, ‘and I am glad of it. But it isn’t that—it isn’t that,’ he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. ‘It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For me, I am little, chetif, insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the ME—’ he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—’it is the ME that is looking for a mistress, and my ME is waiting for the THEE of the mistress, for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I understand.’
‘As for the other, this amour—’ he made a gesture, dashing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—’it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? IT DOES NOT MATTER, it does not matter. So this love, this amour, this BAISER. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas, today, tomorrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no more than the white wine.’
He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation. Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale.
Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own.
‘That is true,’ she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, ‘that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.’
He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest response. And they sat in silence.
‘Do you know,’ he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, self-important, prophetic eyes, ‘your fate and mine, they will run together, till—’ and he broke off in a little grimace.
‘Till when?’ she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I don’t know.’
Gerald did not come in from his skiing until nightfall, he missed the coffee and cake that she took at four o’clock. The snow was in perfect condition, he had travelled a long way, by himself, among the snow ridges, on his skis, he had climbed high, so high that he could see over the top of the pass, five miles distant, could see the Marienhutte, the hostel on the crest of the pass, half buried in snow, and over into the deep valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine trees. One could go that way home; but he shuddered with nausea at the thought of home;—one could travel on skis down there, and come to the old imperial road, below the pass. But why come to any road? He revolted at the thought of finding himself in the world again. He must stay up there in the snow forever. He had been happy by himself, high up there alone, travelling swiftly on skis, taking far flights, and skimming past the dark rocks veined with brilliant snow.
But he felt something icy gathering at his heart. This strange mood of patience and innocence which had persisted in him for some days, was passing away, he would be left again a prey to the horrible passions and tortures.
So he came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, to the house in the hollow, between the knuckles of the mountain tops. He saw its lights shining yellow, and he held back, wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, to hear the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other presences. He was isolated as if there were a vacuum round his heart, or a sheath of pure ice.
The moment he saw Gudrun something jolted in his soul. She was looking rather lofty and superb, smiling slowly and graciously to the Germans. A sudden desire leapt in his heart, to kill her. He thought, what a perfect voluptuous fulfilment it would be, to kill her. His mind was absent all the evening, estranged by the snow and his passion. But he kept the idea constant within him, what a perfect voluptuous consummation it would be to strangle her, to strangle every spark of life out of her, till she lay completely inert, soft, relaxed for ever, a soft heap lying dead between his hands, utterly dead. Then he would have had her finally and for ever; there would be such a perfect voluptuous finality.
Gudrun was unaware of what he was feeling, he seemed so quiet and amiable, as usual. His amiability even made her feel brutal towards him.
She went into his room when he was partially undressed. She did not notice the curious, glad gleam of pure hatred, with which he looked at her. She stood near the door, with her hand behind her.
‘I have been thinking, Gerald,’ she said, with an insulting nonchalance, ‘that I shall not go back to England.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘where will you go then?’
But she ignored his question. She had her own logical statement to make, and it must be made as she had thought it.
‘I can’t see the use of going back,’ she continued. ‘It is over between me and you—’
She paused for him to speak. But he said nothing. He was only talking to himself, saying ‘Over, is it? I believe it is over. But it isn’t finished. Remember, it isn’t finished. We must put some sort of a finish on it. There must be a conclusion, there must be finality.’
So he talked to himself, but aloud he said nothing whatever.
‘What has been, has been,’ she continued. ‘There is nothing that I regret. I hope you regret nothing—’
She waited for him to speak.
‘Oh, I regret nothing,’ he said, accommodatingly.
‘Good then,’ she answered, ‘good then. Then neither of us cherishes any regrets, which is as it should be.’
‘Quite as it should be,’ he said aimlessly.
She paused to gather up her thread again.
‘Our attempt has been a failure,’ she said. ‘But we can try again, elsewhere.’
