Page 624 - women-in-love

vous gratification. There it was, fixed in eternity for her.
The day came fine and bluish. There was a light wind
blowing among the mountain tops, keen as a rapier where it
touched, carrying with it a fine dust of snow-powder. Ger-
ald went out with the fine, blind face of a man who is in
his state of fulfilment. Gudrun and he were in perfect static
unity this morning, but unseeing and unwitting. They went
out with a toboggan, leaving Ursula and Birkin to follow.
Gudrun was all scarlet and royal blue—a scarlet jersey
and cap, and a royal blue skirt and stockings. She went gaily
over the white snow, with Gerald beside her, in white and
grey, pulling the little toboggan. They grew small in the dis-
tance of snow, climbing the steep slope.
For Gudrun herself, she seemed to pass altogether into
the whiteness of the snow, she became a pure, thoughtless
crystal. When she reached the top of the slope, in the wind,
she looked round, and saw peak beyond peak of rock and
snow, bluish, transcendent in heaven. And it seemed to her
like a garden, with the peaks for pure flowers, and her heart
gathering them. She had no separate consciousness for Ger-
ald.
She held on to him as they went sheering down over
the keen slope. She felt as if her senses were being whet-
ted on some fine grindstone, that was keen as flame. The
snow sprinted on either side, like sparks from a blade that
is being sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter,
swifter, in pure flame the white slope flew against her, and
she fused like one molten, dancing globule, rushed through
a white intensity. Then there was a great swerve at the bot-

624 Women in Love