Page 607 - women-in-love

tain tops, folding her round with his arms.
‘I couldn’t bear this cold, eternal place without you,’ he
said. ‘I couldn’t bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.’
She kissed him again, suddenly.
‘Do you hate it?’ she asked, puzzled, wondering.
‘If I couldn’t come near to you, if you weren’t here, I
should hate it. I couldn’t bear it,’ he answered.
‘But the people are nice,’ she said.
‘I mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternality,’ he
said.
She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nest-
ling unconscious in him.
‘Yes, it is good we are warm and together,’ she said.
And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights
of the hotel glowing out in the night of snow-silence, small
in the hollow, like a cluster of yellow berries. It seemed like
a bunch of sun-sparks, tiny and orange in the midst of the
snow-darkness. Behind, was a high shadow of a peak, blot-
ting out the stars, like a ghost.
They drew near to their home. They saw a man come
from the dark building, with a lighted lantern which swung
golden, and made that his dark feet walked in a halo of
snow. He was a small, dark figure in the darkened snow. He
unlatched the door of an outhouse. A smell of cows, hot,
animal, almost like beef, came out on the heavily cold air.
There was a glimpse of two cattle in their dark stalls, then
the door was shut again, and not a chink of light showed. It
had reminded Ursula again of home, of the Marsh, of her
childhood, and of the journey to Brussels, and, strangely, of

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