Page 234 - women-in-love

‘Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house,
where there’s a tent on the lawn?’ he asked.
‘Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?’ asked Ursula,
who was always rushing in too fast.
‘To get out?’ smiled Gerald.
‘You see,’ cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken
rudeness, ‘we don’t know the people, we are almost COM-
PLETE strangers here.’
‘Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,’ he
said easily.
Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then
she smiled at him.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you know what we mean. Can’t we go up
there, and explore that coast?’ She pointed to a grove on the
hillock of the meadow-side, near the shore half way down
the lake. ‘That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe.
Isn’t it beautiful in this light. Really, it’s like one of the reach-
es of the Nile—as one imagines the Nile.’
Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the dis-
tant spot.
‘You’re sure it’s far enough off?’ he asked ironically, add-
ing at once: ‘Yes, you might go there, if we could get a boat.
They seem to be all out.’
He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats
on its surface.
‘How lovely it would be!’ cried Ursula wistfully.
‘And don’t you want tea?’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Gudrun, ‘we could just drink a cup, and be
off.’

234 Women in Love