had collected gradually.

'The three women will dance together,' she said.

'What shall it be?' asked Alexander, rising briskly.

'Vergini Delle Rocchette,' said the Contessa at once.

'They are so languid,' said Ursula.

'The three witches from Macbeth,' suggested Fraulein usefully. It was
finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. Ursula was Naomi,
Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. The idea was to make a little
ballet, in the style of the Russian Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky.

The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, a space was
cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, began slowly to dance
the death of her husband. Then Ruth came, and they wept together, and
lamented, then Naomi came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb
show, the women danced their emotion in gesture and motion. The little
drama went on for a quarter of an hour.

Ursula was beautiful as Naomi. All her men were dead, it remained to
her only to stand alone in indomitable assertion, demanding nothing.
Ruth, woman-loving, loved her. Orpah, a vivid, sensational, subtle
widow, would go back to the former life, a repetition. The interplay
between the women was real and rather frightening. It was strange to
see how Gudrun clung with heavy, desperate passion to Ursula, yet
smiled with subtle malevolence against her, how Ursula accepted
silently, unable to provide any more either for herself or for the
other, but dangerous and indomitable, refuting her grief.

Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa's rapid, stoat-like
sensationalism, Gudrun's ultimate but treacherous cleaving to the woman
in her sister, Ursula's dangerous helplessness, as if she were
helplessly weighted, and unreleased.

'That was very beautiful,' everybody cried with one accord. But
Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not know. She
cried out for more dancing, and it was her will that set the Contessa
and Birkin moving mockingly in Malbrouk.

Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to Naomi. The
essence of that female, subterranean recklessness and mockery
penetrated his blood. He could not forget Gudrun's lifted, offered,
cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking weight. And Birkin, watching
like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen the brilliant frustration
and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She
was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was
unco