Page 143 - women-in-love

for what she might do. He knew a certain danger in her, a
convulsive madness. But he only laughed the more, turning
often to the little Countess, who was flashing up her face at
him.
They all dropped into the water, and were swimming
together like a shoal of seals. Hermione was powerful and
unconscious in the water, large and slow and powerful. Pal-
estra was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered
and flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one after the
other, they waded out, and went up to the house.
But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.
‘You don’t like the water?’ he said.
She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as
he stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads
all over his skin.
‘I like it very much,’ she replied.
He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.
‘And you swim?’
‘Yes, I swim.’
Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then.
He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away,
piqued for the first time.
‘Why wouldn’t you bathe?’ he asked her again, later,
when he was once more the properly-dressed young Eng-
lishman.
She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his
persistence.
‘Because I didn’t like the crowd,’ she replied.
He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his con-

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