He remained calm, calculative and healthy, and quite freely deliberate, even whilst he felt, with faint, small but final sterile horror, that his mystic reason was breaking, giving way now, at this crisis.
And it was a strain.
He knew there was no equilibrium.
He would have to go in some direction, shortly, to find relief.
Only Birkin kept the fear definitely off him, saved him his quick sufficiency in life, by the odd mobility and changeableness which seemed to contain the quintessence of faith.
But then Gerald must always come away from Birkin, as from a Church service, back to the outside real world of work and life.
There it was, it did not alter, and words were futilities.
He had to keep himself in reckoning with the world of work and material life.
And it became more and more difficult, such a strange pressure was upon him, as if the very middle of him were a vacuum, and outside were an awful tension.
He had found his most satisfactory relief in women.
After a debauch with some desperate woman, he went on quite easy and forgetful.
The devil of it was, it was so hard to keep up his interest in women nowadays.
He didn't care about them any more.
A Pussum was all right in her way, but she was an exceptional case, and even she mattered extremely little.
No, women, in that sense, were useless to him any more.
He felt that his MIND needed acute stimulation, before he could be physically roused.
Chapter 18 Rabbit
Gudrun knew that it was a critical thing for her to go to Shortlands.
She knew it was equivalent to accepting Gerald Crich as a lover.
And though she hung back, disliking the condition, yet she knew she would go on.
She equivocated.
She said to herself, in torment recalling the blow and the kiss, 'after all, what is it?
What is a kiss?
What even is a blow?
It is an instant, vanished at once.
I can go to Shortlands just for a time, before I go away, if only to see what it is like.'
For she had an insatiable curiosity to see and to know everything.
She also wanted to know what Winifred was really like.
Having heard the child calling from the steamer in the night, she felt some mysterious connection with her.
Gudrun talked with the father in the library. Then he sent for his daughter.
She came accompanied by Mademoiselle.
'Winnie, this is Miss Brangwen, who will be so kind as to help you with your drawing and making models of your animals,' said the father.
The child looked at Gudrun for a moment with interest, before she came forward and with face averted offered her hand.
There was a complete SANG FROID and indifference under Winifred's childish reserve, a certain irresponsible callousness.
'How do you do?' said the child, not lifting her face.
'How do you do?' said Gudrun.
Then Winifred stood aside, and Gudrun was introduced to Mademoiselle.
'You have a fine day for your walk,' said Mademoiselle, in a bright manner.
'QUITE fine,' said Gudrun.
Winifred was watching from her distance.
She was as if amused, but rather unsure as yet what this new person was like.
She saw so many new persons, and so few who became real to her.
Mademoiselle was of no count whatever, the child merely put up with her, calmly and easily, accepting her little authority with faint scorn, compliant out of childish arrogance of indifference.
'Well, Winifred,' said the father, 'aren't you glad Miss Brangwen has come?
She makes animals and birds in wood and in clay, that the people in London write about in the papers, praising them to the skies.'
Winifred smiled slightly.
'Who told you, Daddie?' she asked.
'Who told me?
Hermione told me, and Rupert Birkin.'
'Do you know them?' Winifred asked of Gudrun, turning to her with faint challenge.