nce he is roused. I shouldn't like to say
whose waist his arm did not go round. Really, Ursula, he seems to reap
the women like a harvest. There wasn't one that would have resisted
him. It was too amazing! Can you understand it?'

Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes.

'Yes,' she said. 'I can. He is such a whole-hogger.'

'Whole-hogger! I should think so!' exclaimed Gudrun. 'But it is true,
Ursula, every woman in the room was ready to surrender to him.
Chanticleer isn't in it--even Fanny Bath, who is GENUINELY in love with
Billy Macfarlane! I never was more amazed in my life! And you know,
afterwards--I felt I was a whole ROOMFUL of women. I was no more myself
to him, than I was Queen Victoria. I was a whole roomful of women at
once. It was most astounding! But my eye, I'd caught a Sultan that
time--'

Gudrun's eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked strange,
exotic, satiric. Ursula was fascinated at once--and yet uneasy.

They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in a daring gown of
vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with green velvet bodice and a
strange black-and-white band round her hair. She was really brilliantly
beautiful and everybody noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded,
gleaming state when he was most handsome. Birkin watched them with
quick, laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head. There
seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, as if
they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the dining-room.

'Don't you love to be in this place?' cried Gudrun. 'Isn't the snow
wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? It is simply
marvellous. One really does feel LIBERMENSCHLICH--more than human.'

'One does,' cried Ursula. 'But isn't that partly the being out of
England?'

'Oh, of course,' cried Gudrun. 'One could never feel like this in
England, for the simple reason that the damper is NEVER lifted off one,
there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in England, of that I
am assured.'

And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was fluttering
with vivid intensity.

'It's quite true,' said Gerald, 'it never is quite the same in England.
But perhaps we don't want it to be--perhaps it's like bringing the
light a little too near the powder-magazine, to let go altogether, in
England. One is afraid what might happen, if EVERYBODY ELSE let go.'

'My God!' cried Gudrun. 'But wouldn't it be wonderful