Page 627 - women-in-love

ential attention. Gudrun wanted to talk to Loerke. He was
a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his view of his art. And
his figure attracted her. There was the look of a little wastrel
about him, that intrigued her, and an old man’s look, that
interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness,
a quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody
else, that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer,
a magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes, that were
sometimes very clever, but which often were not. And she
could see in his brown, gnome’s eyes, the black look of inor-
ganic misery, which lay behind all his small buffoonery.
His figure interested her—the figure of a boy, almost a
street arab. He made no attempt to conceal it. He always
wore a simple loden suit, with knee breeches. His legs were
thin, and he made no attempt to disguise the fact: which
was of itself remarkable, in a German. And he never ingra-
tiated himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to
himself, for all his apparent playfulness.
Leitner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very
handsome with his big limbs and his blue eyes. Loerke
would go toboganning or skating, in little snatches, but he
was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils, the nostrils of a
pure-bred street arab, would quiver with contempt at Leit-
ner’s splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the
two men who had travelled and lived together, sharing the
same bedroom, had now reached the stage of loathing. Leit-
ner hated Loerke with an injured, writhing, impotent hatred,
and Loerke treated Leitner with a fine-quivering contempt
and sarcasm. Soon the two would have to go apart.

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