Page 699 - women-in-love

They played till the sun went down, in pure amusement,
careless and timeless. Then, as the little sledge twirled risk-
ily to rest at the bottom of the slope,
‘Wait!’ he said suddenly, and he produced from some-
where a large thermos flask, a packet of Keks, and a bottle
of Schnapps.
‘Oh Loerke,’ she cried. ‘What an inspiration! What a
COMBLE DE JOIE INDEED! What is the Schnapps?’
He looked at it, and laughed.
‘Heidelbeer!’ he said.
‘No! From the bilberries under the snow. Doesn’t it look
as if it were distilled from snow. Can you—‘ she sniffed, and
sniffed at the bottle—‘can you smell bilberries? Isn’t it won-
derful? It is exactly as if one could smell them through the
snow.’
She stamped her foot lightly on the ground. He kneeled
down and whistled, and put his ear to the snow. As he did
so his black eyes twinkled up.
‘Ha! Ha!’ she laughed, warmed by the whimsical way in
which he mocked at her verbal extravagances. He was always
teasing her, mocking her ways. But as he in his mockery was
even more absurd than she in her extravagances, what could
one do but laugh and feel liberated.
She could feel their voices, hers and his, ringing silvery
like bells in the frozen, motionless air of the first twilight.
How perfect it was, how VERY perfect it was, this silvery
isolation and interplay.
She sipped the hot coffee, whose fragrance flew around
them like bees murmuring around flowers, in the snowy

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