Page 697 - women-in-love

the Marienhutte, perhaps to the village below.
To Gudrun this day was full of a promise like spring. She
felt an approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up
in her. It gave her pleasure to dawdle through her packing,
it gave her pleasure to dip into books, to try on her differ-
ent garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a new
lease of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a
child, very attractive and beautiful to everybody, with her
soft, luxuriant figure, and her happiness. Yet underneath
was death itself.
In the afternoon she had to go out with Loerke. Her to-
morrow was perfectly vague before her. This was what gave
her pleasure. She might be going to England with Gerald,
she might be going to Dresden with Loerke, she might be
going to Munich, to a girl-friend she had there. Anything
might come to pass on the morrow. And today was the
white, snowy iridescent threshold of all possibility. All pos-
sibility—that was the charm to her, the lovely, iridescent,
indefinite charm,—pure illusion All possibility—because
death was inevitable, and NOTHING was possible but
death.
She did not want things to materialise, to take any definite
shape. She wanted, suddenly, at one moment of the journey
tomorrow, to be wafted into an utterly new course, by some
utterly unforeseen event, or motion. So that, although she
wanted to go out with Loerke for the last time into the snow,
she did not want to be serious or businesslike.
And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown vel-
vet cap, that made his head as round as a chestnut, with the

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