Page 263 - women-in-love

the world, there was merely the same world, and absence,
his absence. The night seemed large and vacuous. Lanterns
swayed here and there, people were talking in an undertone
on the launch and in the boats. She could hear Winifred
moaning: ‘OH DO FIND HER GERALD, DO FIND HER,’
and someone trying to comfort the child. Gudrun paddled
aimlessly here and there. The terrible, massive, cold, bound-
less surface of the water terrified her beyond words. Would
he never come back? She felt she must jump into the water
too, to know the horror also.
She started, hearing someone say: ‘There he is.’ She saw
the movement of his swimming, like a water-rat. And she
rowed involuntarily to him. But he was near another boat,
a bigger one. Still she rowed towards him. She must be very
near. She saw him—he looked like a seal. He looked like a
seal as he took hold of the side of the boat. His fair hair was
washed down on his round head, his face seemed to glisten
suavely. She could hear him panting.
Then he clambered into the boat. Oh, and the beauty of
the subjection of his loins, white and dimly luminous as be
climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to
die. The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as be climbed
into the boat, his back rounded and soft—ah, this was too
much for her, too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal
The terrible hopelessness of fate, and of beauty, such beau-
ty!
He was not like a man to her, he was an incarnation, a
great phase of life. She saw him press the water out of his
face, and look at the bandage on his hand. And she knew it

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