Page 637 - women-in-love

swims ahead.’
Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow
outside.
‘I don’t understand your terms, really,’ he said, in a flat,
doomed voice. ‘But it sounds a rum sort of desire.’
‘I suppose we want the same,’ said Birkin. ‘Only we want
to take a quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy—and
he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream.’
Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next op-
portunity to talk to Loerke. It was no use beginning when
the men were there. Then they could get into no touch with
the isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them.
And he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of transmit-
ter to Gudrun.
‘Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?’ Gudrun
asked him one evening.
‘Not now,’ he replied. ‘I have done all sorts—except por-
traits—I never did portraits. But other things—‘
‘What kind of things?’ asked Gudrun.
He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the
room. He returned almost immediately with a little roll of
paper, which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a pho-
togravure reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Loerke.
‘That is quite an early thing—NOT mechanical,’ he said,
‘more popular.’
The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sit-
ting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender,
a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on the horse, her face
in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon.

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