He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then suddenly he braced himself up with a kind of rhapsody, and looked at Birkin with vindictive, cowed eyes, saying:
“Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? She’s so beautiful, so perfect, you find her so good, it tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot—ha, that perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself! And then—” he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands—“it’s nothing—your brain might have gone charred as rags—and—” he looked round into the air with a queer histrionic movement “it’s blasting—you understand what I mean—it is a great experience, something final—and then—you’re shrivelled as if struck by electricity.” He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in extremity bragging truthfully.
“Of course,” he resumed, “I wouldn’t not have had it! It’s a complete experience. And she’s a wonderful woman. But—how I hate her somewhere! It’s curious—”
Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. Gerald seemed blank before his own words.
“But you’ve had enough now?” said Birkin. “You have had your experience. Why work on an old wound?”
“Oh,” said Gerald, “I don’t know. It’s not finished—”
And the two walked on.
“I’ve loved you, as well as Gudrun, don’t forget,” said Birkin bitterly. Gerald looked at him strangely, abstractedly.
“Have you?” he said, with icy scepticism. “Or do you think you have?” He was hardly responsible for what he said.
The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted and they all made their farewell. They wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin took his place, and the sledge drove away leaving Gudrun and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze Birkin’s heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of the snow, growing smaller and more isolated.
XXX
Snowed Up
When Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself free in her contest with Gerald. As they grew more used to each other, he seemed to press upon her more and more. At first she could manage him, so that her own will was always left free. But very soon, he began to ignore her female tactics, he dropped his respect for her whims and her privacies, he began to exert his own will blindly, without submitting to hers.
Already a vital conflict had set in, which frightened them both. But he was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast round for external resource.
When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark and elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window at the big, flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain-knot. That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if she were centred upon the pivot of all existence, there was no further reality.
Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not be long before he came. She was rarely alone, he pressed upon her like a frost, deadening her.
“Are you alone in the dark?” he said. And she could tell by his tone he resented it, he resented this isolation she had drawn round herself. Yet, feeling static and inevitable, she was kind towards him.
“Would you like to light the candle?” she asked.
He did not answer, but came and stood behind her, in the darkness.
“Look,” she said, “at that lovely star up there. Do you know its name?”
He crouched beside her, to look through the low window.
“No,” he said. “It is very fine.”
“Isn’t it beautiful! Do you notice how it darts different coloured fires—it flashes really superbly—”
They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture she put her hand on his knee, and took his hand.
“Are you regretting Ursula?” he asked.
“No, not at all,” she said. Then, in a slow mood, she asked:
“How much do you love me?”
He stiffened himself further against her.
“How much do you think I do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“But what is your opinion?” he asked.
There was a pause. At length, in the darkness, came her voice, hard and indifferent:
“Very little indeed,” she said coldly, almost flippant.
His heart went icy at the sound of her voice.
“Why don’t I love you?” he asked, as if admitting the truth of her accusation, yet hating her for it.
“I don’t know why you don’t—I’ve been good to you. You were in a fearful state when you came to me.”
Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong and unrelenting.
“When was I in a fearful state?” he asked.
“When you first came to me. I had to take pity on you. But it was never love.”
It was that statement “It was never love,” which sounded in his ears with madness.
“Why must you repeat it so often, that there is no love?” he said in a voice strangled with rage.
“Well you don’t think you love, do you?” she asked.
He was silent with cold passion of anger.
“You don’t think you can love me, do you?” she repeated almost with a sneer.
“No,” he said.
“You know you never have loved me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean by the word love,” he replied.
“Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me. Have you, do you think?”
“No,” he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness and obstinacy.
“And you never will love me,” she said finally, “will you?”
There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear.
“No,” he said.
“Then,” she replied, “what have you against me!”
He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. “If only I could kill her,” his heart was whispering repeatedly. “If only I could kill her—I should be free.”
It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot.
“Why do you torture me?” he said.
She flung her arms round his neck.
“Ah, I
