Who can take political Ireland really seriously, whatever it does? And who can take political England seriously? Who can? Who can care a straw, really, how the old patched-up Constitution is tinkered at any more? Who cares a button for our national ideas, any more than for our national bowler hat? Aha, it is all old hat, it is all old bowler hat!
That's all it is, Gerald, my young hero.At any rate we'll spare ourselves the nausea of stirring the old broth any more.You be beautiful, my Gerald, and reckless.There are perfect moments.Wake up, Gerald, wake up, convince me of the perfect moments.Oh, convince me, I need it.
He opened his eyes, and looked at her.She greeted him with a mocking, enigmatic smile in which was a poignant gaiety.Over his face went the reflection of the smile, he smiled, too, purely unconsciously.
That filled her with extraordinary delight, to see the smile cross his face, reflected from her face.She remembered that was how a baby smiled.
It filled her with extraordinary radiant delight.
`You've done it,' she said.
`What?' he asked, dazed.
`Convinced me.'
And she bent down, kissing him passionately, passionately, so that he was bewildered.He did not ask her of what he had convinced her, though he meant to.He was glad she was kissing him.She seemed to be feeling for his very heart to touch the quick of him.And he wanted her to touch the quick of his being, he wanted that most of all.
Outside, somebody was singing, in a manly, reckless handsome voice: `Mach mir auf, mach mir auf, du Stolze, Mach mir ein Feuer von Holze.Vom Regen bin ich nass Vom Regen bin ich nass--'
Gudrun knew that that song would sound through her eternity, sung in a manly, reckless, mocking voice.It marked one of her supreme moments, the supreme pangs of her nervous gratification.There it was, fixed in eternity for her.
The day came fine and bluish.There was a light wind blowing among the mountain tops, keen as a rapier where it touched, carrying with it a fine dust of snow-powder.Gerald went out with the fine, blind face of a man who is in his state of fulfilment.Gudrun and he were in perfect static unity this morning, but unseeing and unwitting.They went out with a toboggan, leaving Ursula and Birkin to follow.
Gudrun was all scarlet and royal blue -- a scarlet jersey and cap, and a royal blue skirt and stockings.She went gaily over the white snow, with Gerald beside her, in white and grey, pulling the little toboggan.They grew small in the distance of snow, climbing the steep slope.
For Gudrun herself, she seemed to pass altogether into the whiteness of the snow, she became a pure, thoughtless crystal.When she reached the top of the slope, in the wind, she looked round, and saw peak beyond peak of rock and snow, bluish, transcendent in heaven.And it seemed to her like a garden, with the peaks for pure flowers, and her heart gathering them.She had no separate consciousness for Gerald.
She held on to him as they went sheering down over the keen slope.She felt as if her senses were being whetted on some fine grindstone, that was keen as flame.The snow sprinted on either side, like sparks from a blade that is being sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter, swifter, in pure flame the white slope flew against her, and she fused like one molten, dancing globule, rushed through a white intensity.Then there was a great swerve at the bottom, when they swung as it were in a fall to earth, in the diminishing motion.
They came to rest.But when she rose to her feet, she could not stand.
She gave a strange cry, turned and clung to him, sinking her face on his breast, fainting in him.Utter oblivion came over her, as she lay for a few moments abandoned against him.
`What is it?' he was saying.`Was it too much for you?'
But she heard nothing.
When she came to, she stood up and looked round, astonished.Her face was white, her eyes brilliant and large.
`What is it?' he repeated.`Did it upset you?'
She looked at him with her brilliant eyes that seemed to have undergone some transfiguration, and she laughed, with a terrible merriment.
`No,' she cried, with triumphant joy.`It was the complete moment of my life.'
And she looked at him with her dazzling, overweening laughter, like one possessed.A fine blade seemed to enter his heart, but he did not care, or take any notice.
But they climbed up the slope again, and they flew down through the white flame again, splendidly, splendidly.Gudrun was laughing and flashing, powdered with snow-crystals, Gerald worked perfectly.He felt he could guide the toboggan to a hair-breadth, almost he could make it pierce into the air and right into the very heart of the sky.It seemed to him the flying sledge was but his strength spread out, he had but to move his arms, the motion was his own.They explored the great slopes, to find another slide.He felt there must be something better than they had known.And he found what he desired, a perfect long, fierce sweep, sheering past the foot of a rock and into the trees at the base.It was dangerous, he knew.
But then he knew also he would direct the sledge between his fingers.
The first days passed in an ecstasy of physical motion, sleighing, skiing, skating, moving in an intensity of speed and white light that surpassed life itself, and carried the souls of the human beings beyond into an inhuman abstraction of velocity and weight and eternal, frozen snow.
Gerald's eyes became hard and strange, 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.
