rsula was quite absorbed in her song, when suddenly Gudrun stopped and
said mildly, ironically:

'Ursula!'

'Yes?' said Ursula, opening her eyes out of the trance.

Gudrun was standing still and pointing, a mocking smile on her face,
towards the side.

'Ugh!' cried Ursula in sudden panic, starting to her feet.

'They're quite all right,' rang out Gudrun's sardonic voice.

On the left stood a little cluster of Highland cattle, vividly coloured
and fleecy in the evening light, their horns branching into the sky,
pushing forward their muzzles inquisitively, to know what it was all
about. Their eyes glittered through their tangle of hair, their naked
nostrils were full of shadow.

'Won't they do anything?' cried Ursula in fear.

Gudrun, who was usually frightened of cattle, now shook her head in a
queer, half-doubtful, half-sardonic motion, a faint smile round her
mouth.

'Don't they look charming, Ursula?' cried Gudrun, in a high, strident
voice, something like the scream of a seagull.

'Charming,' cried Ursula in trepidation. 'But won't they do anything to
us?'

Again Gudrun looked back at her sister with an enigmatic smile, and
shook her head.

'I'm sure they won't,' she said, as if she had to convince herself
also, and yet, as if she were confident of some secret power in
herself, and had to put it to the test. 'Sit down and sing again,' she
called in her high, strident voice.

'I'm frightened,' cried Ursula, in a pathetic voice, watching the group
of sturdy short cattle, that stood with their knees planted, and
watched with their dark, wicked eyes, through the matted fringe of
their hair. Nevertheless, she sank down again, in her former posture.

'They are quite safe,' came Gudrun's high call. 'Sing something, you've
only to sing something.'

It was evident she had a strange passion to dance before the sturdy,
handsome cattle.

Ursula began to sing, in a false quavering voice:

'Way down in Tennessee--'

She sounded purely anxious. Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms
outspread and her face uplifted, went in a strange palpitating dance
towards the cattle, lifting her body towards them as if in a spell, her
feet pulsing as if in some little frenzy of unconscious sensation, her
arms, her wrists, her hands stretching and heaving and falling and
reaching and reaching and falling, her breasts lifted and shaken
towards the cattle, her throat exposed as in some voluptuous ecstasy
towards them, whilst s