bat. But in his figure, in the greeny loden suit,
he looked CHETIF and puny, still strangely different from the rest.

He had taken a little toboggan, for the two of them, and they trudged
between the blinding slopes of snow, that burned their now hardening
faces, laughing in an endless sequence of quips and jests and polyglot
fancies. The fancies were the reality to both of them, they were both
so happy, tossing about the little coloured balls of verbal humour and
whimsicality. Their natures seemed to sparkle in full interplay, they
were enjoying a pure game. And they wanted to keep it on the level of a
game, their relationship: SUCH a fine game.

Loerke did not take the toboganning very seriously. He put no fire and
intensity into it, as Gerald did. Which pleased Gudrun. She was weary,
oh so weary of Gerald's gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke
let the sledge go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a
bend, he pitched both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for
them both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, to be
laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew he would be making ironical,
playful remarks as he wandered in hell--if he were in the humour. And
that pleased her immensely. It seemed like a rising above the
dreariness of actuality, the monotony of contingencies.

They played till the sun went down, in pure amusement, careless and
timeless. Then, as the little sledge twirled riskily to rest at the
bottom of the slope,

'Wait!' he said suddenly, and he produced from somewhere 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 wonderful? 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