And do you know, Ursula, so it was—' Gudrun laughed rather hollowly.
'But how was Gerald among them all?' asked Ursula.
'Gerald!
Oh, my word, he came out like a dandelion in the sun! HE'S a whole saturnalia in himself, once he is roused.
I shouldn't like to say whose waist his arm did not go round.
Really, Ursula, he seems to reap the women like a harvest.
There wasn't one that would have resisted him.
It was too amazing!
Can you understand it?'
Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes.
'Yes,' she said. 'I can.
He is such a whole-hogger.'
'Whole-hogger!
I should think so!' exclaimed Gudrun. 'But it is true, Ursula, every woman in the room was ready to surrender to him.
Chanticleer isn't in it—even Fanny Bath, who is GENUINELY in love with Billy Macfarlane!
I never was more amazed in my life!
And you know, afterwards—I felt I was a whole ROOMFUL of women.
I was no more myself to him, than I was Queen Victoria.
I was a whole roomful of women at once.
It was most astounding!
But my eye, I'd caught a Sultan that time—'
Gudrun's eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked strange, exotic, satiric.
Ursula was fascinated at once—and yet uneasy.
They had to get ready for dinner.
Gudrun came down in a daring gown of vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a strange black-and-white band round her hair.
She was really brilliantly beautiful and everybody noticed her.
Gerald was in that full-blooded, gleaming state when he was most handsome.
Birkin watched them with quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head.
There seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, as if they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the dining-room.
'Don't you love to be in this place?' cried Gudrun. 'Isn't the snow wonderful!
Do you notice how it exalts everything?
It is simply marvellous.
One really does feel LIBERMENSCHLICH—more than human.'
'One does,' cried Ursula. 'But isn't that partly the being out of England?'
'Oh, of course,' cried Gudrun. 'One could never feel like this in England, for the simple reason that the damper is NEVER lifted off one, there.
It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I am assured.'
And she turned again to the food she was eating.
She was fluttering with vivid intensity.
'It's quite true,' said Gerald, 'it never is quite the same in England.
But perhaps we don't want it to be—perhaps it's like bringing the light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let go altogether, in England.
One is afraid what might happen, if EVERYBODY ELSE let go.'
'My God!' cried Gudrun. 'But wouldn't it be wonderful, if all England did suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.'
'It couldn't,' said Ursula. 'They are all too damp, the powder is damp in them.'
'I'm not so sure of that,' said Gerald.
'Nor I,' said Birkin. 'When the English really begin to go off, EN MASSE, it'll be time to shut your ears and run.'
'They never will,' said Ursula.
'We'll see,' he replied.
'Isn't it marvellous,' said Gudrun, 'how thankful one can be, to be out of one's country.
I cannot believe myself, I am so transported, the moment I set foot on a foreign shore.
I say to myself