's hand,
casting a strange gleam on her face. It flickered, and Birkin went
bending over the well of light. His face shone out like an apparition,
so unconscious, and again, something demoniacal. Ursula was dim and
veiled, looming over him.

'That is all right,' said his voice softly.

She held up the lantern. It had a flight of storks streaming through a
turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth.

'This is beautiful,' she said.

'Lovely,' echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and lift it up
full of beauty.

'Light one for me,' she said. Gerald stood by her, incapacitated.
Birkin lit the lantern she held up. Her heart beat with anxiety, to see
how beautiful it would be. It was primrose yellow, with tall straight
flowers growing darkly from their dark leaves, lifting their heads into
the primrose day, while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure
clear light.

Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with delight.

'Isn't it beautiful, oh, isn't it beautiful!'

Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated beyond
herself. Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of light, as if to
see. He came close to her, and stood touching her, looking with her at
the primrose-shining globe. And she turned her face to his, that was
faintly bright in the light of the lantern, and they stood together in
one luminous union, close together and ringed round with light, all the
rest excluded.

Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula's second lantern. It had a
pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea-weed moving sinuously
under a transparent sea, that passed into flamy ruddiness above.

'You've got the heavens above, and the waters under the earth,' said
Birkin to her.

'Anything but the earth itself,' she laughed, watching his live hands
that hovered to attend to the light.

'I'm dying to see what my second one is,' cried Gudrun, in a vibrating
rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the others from her.

Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue colour, with a
red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing in white soft streams
all over it. The cuttle-fish had a face that stared straight from the
heart of the light, very fixed and coldly intent.

'How truly terrifying!' exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of horror. Gerald,
at her side, gave a low laugh.

'But isn't it really fearful!' she cried in dismay.

Again he laughed, and said:

'Change it with Urs