ugly enough, aren't I?'

He looked at her with an artist's sudden, critical, estimating eye.

'You are beautiful,' he said, 'and I am glad of it. But it isn't
that--it isn't that,' he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. 'It
is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For
me, I am little, chetif, insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be
strong and handsome, then. But it is the ME--' he put his fingers to
his mouth, oddly--'it is the ME that is looking for a mistress, and my
ME is waiting for the THEE of the mistress, for the match to my
particular intelligence. You understand?'

'Yes,' she said, 'I understand.'

'As for the other, this amour--' he made a gesture, dashing his hand
aside, as if to dash away something troublesome--'it is unimportant,
unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening,
or whether I drink nothing? IT DOES NOT MATTER, it does not matter. So
this love, this amour, this BAISER. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas, today,
tomorrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter--no more
than the white wine.'

He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation.
Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale.

Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own.

'That is true,' she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, 'that is
true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.'

He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a
little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest
response. And they sat in silence.

'Do you know,' he said, suddenly looking at her with dark,
self-important, prophetic eyes, 'your fate and mine, they will run
together, till--' and he broke off in a little grimace.

'Till when?' she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was
terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook
his head.

'I don't know,' he said, 'I don't know.'

Gerald did not come in from his skiing until nightfall, he missed the
coffee and cake that she took at four o'clock. The snow was in perfect
condition, he had travelled a long way, by himself, among the snow
ridges, on his skis, he had climbed high, so high that he could see
over the top of the pass, five miles distant, could see the
Marienhutte, the hostel on the crest of the pass, half buried in snow,
and over into the deep valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine trees.
One could go that way home; but he shudder