Page 698 - women-in-love

brown-velvet flaps loose and wild over his ears, and a wisp
of elf-like, thin black hair blowing above his full, elf-like
dark eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin crinkling up
into odd grimaces on his small-featured face, he looked an
odd little boy-man, a bat. But in his figure, in the greeny
loden suit, he looked CHETIF and puny, still strangely dif-
ferent from the rest.
He had taken a little toboggan, for the two of them, and
they trudged between the blinding slopes of snow, that
burned their now hardening faces, laughing in an endless
sequence of quips and jests and polyglot fancies. The fancies
were the reality to both of them, they were both so happy,
tossing about the little coloured balls of verbal humour and
whimsicality. Their natures seemed to sparkle in full inter-
play, they were enjoying a pure game. And they wanted to
keep it on the level of a game, their relationship: SUCH a
fine game.
Loerke did not take the toboganning very seriously.
He put no fire and intensity into it, as Gerald did. Which
pleased Gudrun. She was weary, oh so weary of Gerald’s
gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke let the sledge
go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a bend,
he pitched both her and him out into the snow, he only wait-
ed for them both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen
white ground, to be laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew
he would be making ironical, playful remarks as he wan-
dered in hell—if he were in the humour. And that pleased
her immensely. It seemed like a rising above the dreariness
of actuality, the monotony of contingencies.

698 Women in Love