Ursula was dim and veiled, looming over him.
'That is all right,' said his voice softly.
She held up the lantern.
It had a flight of storks streaming through a turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth.
'This is beautiful,' she said.
'Lovely,' echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and lift it up full of beauty.
'Light one for me,' she said.
Gerald stood by her, incapacitated.
Birkin lit the lantern she held up.
Her heart beat with anxiety, to see how beautiful it would be.
It was primrose yellow, with tall straight flowers growing darkly from their dark leaves, lifting their heads into the primrose day, while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure clear light.
Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with delight.
'Isn't it beautiful, oh, isn't it beautiful!'
Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated beyond herself.
Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of light, as if to see.
He came close to her, and stood touching her, looking with her at the primrose-shining globe.
And she turned her face to his, that was faintly bright in the light of the lantern, and they stood together in one luminous union, close together and ringed round with light, all the rest excluded.
Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula's second lantern.
It had a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously under a transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above.
'You've got the heavens above, and the waters under the earth,' said Birkin to her.
'Anything but the earth itself,' she laughed, watching his live hands that hovered to attend to the light.
'I'm dying to see what my second one is,' cried Gudrun, in a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her.
Birkin went and kindled it.
It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams all over it.
The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the heart of the light, very fixed and coldly intent.
'How truly terrifying!' exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror.
Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh.
'But isn't it really fearful!' she cried in dismay.
Again he laughed, and said:
'Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.'
Gudrun was silent for a moment.
'Ursula,' she said, 'could you bear to have this fearful thing?'
'I think the colouring is LOVELY,' said Ursula.
'So do I,' said Gudrun. 'But could you BEAR to have it swinging to your boat?
Don't you want to destroy it at ONCE?'
'Oh no,' said Ursula. 'I don't want to destroy it.'
'Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs?
Are you sure you don't mind?'
Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns.
'No,' said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the cuttle-fish.
Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way in which Gudrun and Gerald should assume a right over her, a precedence.
'Come then,' said Birkin. 'I'll put them on the boats.'
He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat.
'I suppose you'll row me back, Rupert,' said Gerald, out of the pale shadow of the evening.
'Won't you go with Gudrun in the canoe?' said Birkin. 'It'll be more interesting.'
There was a moment's pause.
Birkin and Ursula stood dimly, with their swinging lanterns, by the water's edge.
The world was all illusive.
'Is that all right?' said Gudrun to him.
'It'll suit ME very well,' he said. 'But what about you, and the rowing?