nt,
hating to answer her. Then, compelled, he began:

'I know what centres they live from--what they perceive and feel--the
hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux of cold water and
mud--the curious bitter stinging heat of a goose's blood, entering
their own blood like an inoculation of corruptive fire--fire of the
cold-burning mud--the lotus mystery.'

Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. Her eyes were
strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, drooping lids. Her thin
bosom shrugged convulsively. He stared back at her, devilish and
unchanging. With another strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as
if she were sick, could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For
with her mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as
it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some
insidious occult potency.

'Yes,' she said, as if she did not know what she were saying. 'Yes,'
and she swallowed, and tried to regain her mind. But she could not, she
was witless, decentralised. Use all her will as she might, she could
not recover. She suffered the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and
gone in a horrible corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved.
She strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one attacked
by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was gone like a corpse,
that has no presence, no connection. He remained hard and vindictive.

Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her eyes heavy and
full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had put on a dress of stiff
old greenish brocade, that fitted tight and made her look tall and
rather terrible, ghastly. In the gay light of the drawing-room she was
uncanny and oppressive. But seated in the half-light of the diningroom,
sitting stiffly before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a
power, a presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention.

The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody had put on
evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Mattheson. The little Italian
Contessa wore a dress of tissue, of orange and gold and black velvet in
soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald green with strange net-work,
Ursula was in yellow with dull silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of
grey, crimson and jet, Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a
sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours
under the candle-light. She was aware of the tal