Page 605 - women-in-love

ing, delicious melancholy, they praised her in soft, reverent
voices, they could not say too much.
‘Wie schon, wie ruhrend! Ach, die Schottischen Lieder,
sie haben so viel Stimmung! Aber die gnadige Frau hat eine
WUNDERBARE Stimme; die gnadige Frau ist wirklich
eine Kunstlerin, aber wirklich!’
She was dilated and brilliant, like a flower in the morn-
ing sun. She felt Birkin looking at her, as if he were jealous of
her, and her breasts thrilled, her veins were all golden. She
was as happy as the sun that has just opened above clouds.
And everybody seemed so admiring and radiant, it was per-
fect.
After dinner she wanted to go out for a minute, to look
at the world. The company tried to dissuade her—it was so
terribly cold. But just to look, she said.
They all four wrapped up warmly, and found themselves
in a vague, unsubstantial outdoors of dim snow and ghosts
of an upper-world, that made strange shadows before the
stars. It was indeed cold, bruisingly, frighteningly, unnatu-
rally cold. Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils.
It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense
murderous coldness.
Yet it was wonderful, an intoxication, a silence of dim,
unrealised snow, of the invisible intervening between her
and the visible, between her and the flashing stars. She
could see Orion sloping up. How wonderful he was, won-
derful enough to make one cry aloud.
And all around was this cradle of snow, and there was
firm snow underfoot, that struck with heavy cold through

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