e, and as he went by on his skis he
was more like some powerful, fateful sigh than a man, his muscles
elastic in a perfect, soaring trajectory, his body projected in pure
flight, mindless, soulless, whirling along one perfect line of force.

Luckily there came a day of snow, when they must all stay indoors:
otherwise Birkin said, they would all lose their faculties, and begin
to utter themselves in cries and shrieks, like some strange, unknown
species of snow-creatures.

It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the Reunionsaal talking
to Loerke. The latter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full
of mischievous humour, as usual.

But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too,
the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if
he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection,
against which he was rebelling.

Loerke had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand,
had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun
wanted to talk to Loerke. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his
view of his art. And his figure attracted her. There was the look of a
little wastrel about him, that intrigued her, and an old man's look,
that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a
quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that
marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of
mischievous word-jokes, that were sometimes very clever, but which
often were not. And she could see in his brown, gnome's eyes, the black
look of inorganic misery, which lay behind all his small buffoonery.

His figure interested her--the figure of a boy, almost a street arab.
He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a simple loden suit,
with knee breeches. His legs were thin, and he made no attempt to
disguise the fact: which was of itself remarkable, in a German. And he
never ingratiated himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to
himself, for all his apparent playfulness.

Leitner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very handsome with his
big limbs and his blue eyes. Loerke would go toboganning or skating, in
little snatches, but he was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils,
the nostrils of a pure-bred street arab, would quiver with contempt at
Leitner's splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two
men who had travelled and lived together, sharing the s