the powerful horse, pathetically, the small
feet folded one over the other, as if to hide. But there was no hiding.
There she was exposed naked on the naked flank of the horse.

The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It was a
massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power. Its neck was
arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid
with power.

Gudrun went pale, and a darkness came over her eyes, like shame, she
looked up with a certain supplication, almost slave-like. He glanced at
her, and jerked his head a little.

'How big is it?' she asked, in a toneless voice, persisting in
appearing casual and unaffected.

'How big?' he replied, glancing again at her. 'Without pedestal--so
high--' he measured with his hand--'with pedestal, so--'

He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, turgid contempt
for her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to cringe a little.

'And what is it done in?' she asked, throwing back her head and looking
at him with affected coldness.

He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not shaken.

'Bronze--green bronze.'

'Green bronze!' repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his challenge. She
was thinking of the slender, immature, tender limbs of the girl, smooth
and cold in green bronze.

'Yes, beautiful,' she murmured, looking up at him with a certain dark
homage.

He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant.

'Why,' said Ursula, 'did you make the horse so stiff? It is as stiff as
a block.'

'Stiff?' he repeated, in arms at once.

'Yes. LOOK how stock and stupid and brutal it is. Horses are sensitive,
quite delicate and sensitive, really.'

He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow
indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an
impertinent nobody.

'Wissen Sie,' he said, with an insulting patience and condescension in
his voice, 'that horse is a certain FORM, part of a whole form. It is
part of a work of art, a piece of form. It is not a picture of a
friendly horse to which you give a lump of sugar, do you see--it is
part of a work of art, it has no relation to anything outside that work
of art.'

Ursula, angry at being treated quite so insultingly DE HAUT EN BAS,
from the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric
amateurism, replied, hotly, flushing and lifting her face.

'But it IS a picture of a horse, nevertheless.'

He lifted his shoulders i