Page 269 - women-in-love

looked away. She could not bear to see him winding heav-
ily and laboriously, bending and rising mechanically like a
slave, turning the handle.
Then, a real shock to her, there came a loud splashing of
water from out of the dark, tree-filled hollow beyond the
road, a splashing that deepened rapidly to a harsh roar, and
then became a heavy, booming noise of a great body of wa-
ter falling solidly all the time. It occupied the whole of the
night, this great steady booming of water, everything was
drowned within it, drowned and lost. Ursula seemed to
have to struggle for her life. She put her hands over her ears,
and looked at the high bland moon.
‘Can’t we go now?’ she cried to Birkin, who was watch-
ing the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower. It
seemed to fascinate him. He looked at her and nodded.
The little dark boats had moved nearer, people were
crowding curiously along the hedge by the high-road, to see
what was to be seen. Birkin and Ursula went to the cottage
with the key, then turned their backs on the lake. She was in
great haste. She could not bear the terrible crushing boom
of the escaping water.
‘Do you think they are dead?’ she cried in a high voice, to
make herself heard.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Isn’t it horrible!’
He paid no heed. They walked up the hill, further and
further away from the noise.
‘Do you mind very much?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t mind about the dead,’ he said, ‘once they are

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