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 there were no beyond.
Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away beyond, below her, lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted wonderful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain–tops was not universal! One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away.
She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow–world, the terrible, static ice–built mountain tops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell its earthy fecundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds.
She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed.
'Rupert,' she said, bursting in on him. 'I want to go away.'
He looked up at her slowly.
'Do you?' he replied mildly.
She sat by him und put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was so little surprised.
'Don’t you?' she asked troubled.
'I hadn’t thought about it,' he said. 'But I’m sure I do.'
She sat up, suddenly erect.
'I hate it,' she said. 'I hate the snow, and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.'
He lay still and laughed, meditating.
'Well,' he said, 'we can go away—we can go tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow to Verona, and find Romeo and Juliet, and sit in the amphitheatre—shall we?'
Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder with perplexity and shyness. He lay so untrammelled.
'Yes,' she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul had new wings, now he was so uncaring. 'I shall love to be Romeo and Juliet,' she said. 'My love!'
'Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,' he said, 'from out of the Alps. We shall have the smell of the snow in our noses.'
She sat up and looked at him.
'Are you glad to go?' she asked, troubled.
His eyes were inscrutable and laughing. She hid her face against his neck, clinging close to him, pleading:
