with
himself, he slept for two hours.

Then he got up, hard and full of energy. Gudrun scarcely spoke to him,
except at coffee when she said:

'I shall be leaving tomorrow.'

'We will go together as far as Innsbruck, for appearance's sake?' he
asked.

'Perhaps,' she said.

She said 'Perhaps' between the sips of her coffee. And the sound of her
taking her breath in the word, was nauseous to him. He rose quickly to
be away from her.

He went and made arrangements for the departure on the morrow. Then,
taking some food, he set out for the day on the skis. Perhaps, he said
to the Wirt, he would go up to the Marienhutte, perhaps to the village
below.

To Gudrun this day was full of a promise like spring. She felt an
approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in her. It gave
her pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it gave her pleasure to dip
into books, to try on her different garments, to look at herself in the
glass. She felt a new lease of life was come upon her, and she was
happy like a child, very attractive and beautiful to everybody, with
her soft, luxuriant figure, and her happiness. Yet underneath was death
itself.

In the afternoon she had to go out with Loerke. Her tomorrow was
perfectly vague before her. This was what gave her pleasure. She might
be going to England with Gerald, she might be going to Dresden with
Loerke, she might be going to Munich, to a girl-friend she had there.
Anything might come to pass on the morrow. And today was the white,
snowy iridescent threshold of all possibility. All possibility--that
was the charm to her, the lovely, iridescent, indefinite charm,--pure
illusion All possibility--because death was inevitable, and NOTHING was
possible but death.

She did not want things to materialise, to take any definite shape. She
wanted, suddenly, at one moment of the journey tomorrow, to be wafted
into an utterly new course, by some utterly unforeseen event, or
motion. So that, although she wanted to go out with Loerke for the last
time into the snow, she did not want to be serious or businesslike.

And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown velvet cap, that made
his head as round as a chestnut, with the 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