She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Loerke sat in stiff dislike of her. Gerald too, who had come up in the beginning of the speech, stood looking at her in complete disapproval and opposition. He felt she was undignified, she put a sort of vulgarity over the esotericism which gave man his last distinction. He joined his forces with the other two. They all three wanted her to go away. But she sat on in silence, her soul weeping, throbbing violently, her fingers twisting her handkerchief.
The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of Ursula’s obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a voice that was quite cool and casual, as if resuming a casual conversation:
“Was the girl a model?”
“Nein, sie war kein Modell. Sie war eine kleine Malschülerin.”
“An art-student!” replied Gudrun.
And how the situation revealed itself to her! She saw the girl art-student, unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too young, her straight flaxen hair cut short, hanging just into her neck, curving inwards slightly, because it was rather thick; and Loerke, the well-known master-sculptor, and the girl, probably well-brought-up, and of good family, thinking herself so great to be his mistress. Oh how well she knew the common callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris, or London, what did it matter? She knew it.
“Where is she now?” Ursula asked.
Loerke raised his shoulders, to convey his complete ignorance and indifference.
“That is already six years ago,” he said; “she will be twenty-three years old, no more good.”
Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It attracted him also. He saw on the pedestal, that the piece was called “Lady Godiva.”
“But this isn’t Lady Godiva,” he said, smiling good-humouredly. “She was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other, who covered herself with her long hair.”
“À la Maud Allan,” said Gudrun with a mocking grimace.
“Why Maud Allan?” he replied. “Isn’t it so? I always thought the legend was that.”
“Yes, Gerald dear, I’m quite sure you’ve got the legend perfectly.”
She was laughing at him, with a little, mock-caressive contempt.
“To be sure, I’d rather see the woman than the hair,” he laughed in return.
“Wouldn’t you just!” mocked Gudrun.
Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together.
Gudrun took the picture again from Gerald, and sat looking at it closely.
“Of course,” she said, turning to tease Loerke now, “you understood your little Malschülerin.”
He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent shrug.
“The little girl?” asked Gerald, pointing to the figure.
Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked up at Gerald, full into his eyes, so that he seemed to be blinded.
“Didn’t he understand her!” she said to Gerald, in a slightly mocking, humorous playfulness. “You’ve only to look at the feet—aren’t they darling, so pretty and tender—oh, they’re really wonderful, they are really—”
She lifted her eyes slowly, with a hot, flaming look into Loerke’s eyes. His soul was filled with her burning recognition, he seemed to grow more uppish and lordly.
Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet. They were turned together, half covering each other in pathetic shyness and fear. He looked at them a long time, fascinated. Then, in some pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full of barrenness.
“What was her name?” Gudrun asked Loerke.
“Annette von Weck,” Loerke replied reminiscent. “Ja, sie war hübsch. She was pretty—but she was tiresome. She was a nuisance—not for a minute would she keep still—not until I’d slapped her hard and made her cry—then she’d sit for five minutes.”
He was thinking over the work, his work, the all important to him.
“Did you really slap her?” asked Gudrun, coolly.
He glanced back at her, reading her challenge.
“Yes, I did,” he said, nonchalant, “harder than I have ever beat anything in my life. I had to, I had to. It was the only way I got the work done.”
Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes, for some moments. She seemed to be considering his very soul. Then she looked down, in silence.
“Why did you have such a young Godiva then?” asked Gerald. “She is so small, besides, on the horse—not big enough for it—such a child.”
A queer spasm went over Loerke’s face.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them any bigger, any older. Then they are beautiful, at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—after that, they are no use to me.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“Why not?” asked Gerald.
Loerke shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t find them interesting—or beautiful—they are no good to me, for my work.”
“Do you mean to say a woman isn’t beautiful after she is twenty?” asked Gerald.
“For me, no. Before twenty, she is small and fresh and tender and slight. After that—let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeoise—so are they all.”
“And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?” asked Gerald.
“They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,” Loerke repeated impatiently. “I don’t find them beautiful.”
“You are an epicure,” said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh.
“And what about men?” asked Gudrun suddenly.
“Yes, they are good at all ages,” replied Loerke. “A man should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.”
Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb.
Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her, like a miracle, that she might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow, as if
