Page 139 - women-in-love

playing her little game, objective and cold, like a weasel
watching everything, and extracting her own amusement,
never giving herself in the slightest; then Miss Bradley,
heavy and rather subservient, treated with cool, almost
amused contempt by Hermione, and therefore slighted by
everybody—how known it all was, like a game with the
figures set out, the same figures, the Queen of chess, the
knights, the pawns, the same now as they were hundreds
of years ago, the same figures moving round in one of the
innumerable permutations that make up the game. But the
game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is so ex-
hausted.
There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game
pleased him. There was Gudrun, watching with steady,
large, hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, and she loathed
it. There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her
face, as if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her
consciousness.
Suddenly Birkin got up and went out.
‘That’s enough,’ he said to himself involuntarily.
Hermione knew his motion, though not in her conscious-
ness. She lifted her heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly
away, on a sudden, unknown tide, and the waves broke over
her. Only her indomitable will remained static and mechan-
ical, she sat at the table making her musing, stray remarks.
But the darkness had covered her, she was like a ship that
has gone down. It was finished for her too, she was wrecked
in the darkness. Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will
worked on, she had that activity.

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