“Sort of petunia, I suppose,” he answered. “I don’t really know them.”
“They are quite strangers to me,” she said.
They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.
She was aware of Mademoiselle standing near, like a little French beetle, observant and calculating. She moved away with Winifred, saying they would go to find Bismarck.
Gerald watched them go, looking all the while at the soft, full, still body of Gudrun, in its silky cashmere. How silky and rich and soft her body must be. An excess of appreciation came over his mind, she was the all-desirable, the all-beautiful. He wanted only to come to her, nothing more. He was only this, this being that should come to her, and be given to her.
At the same time he was finely and acutely aware of Mademoiselle’s neat, brittle finality of form. She was like some elegant beetle with thin ankles, perched on her high heels, her glossy black dress perfectly correct, her dark hair done high and admirably. How repulsive her completeness and her finality was! He loathed her.
Yet he did admire her. She was perfectly correct. And it did rather annoy him, that Gudrun came dressed in startling colours, like a macaw, when the family was in mourning. Like a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she took her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, and her dress a deep blue. Yet it pleased him. It pleased him very much. He felt the challenge in her very attire—she challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the note of a trumpet.
Gudrun and Winifred went through the house to the back, where were the stables and the out-buildings. Everywhere was still and deserted. Mr Crich had gone out for a short drive, the stableman had just led round Gerald’s horse. The two girls went to the hutch that stood in a corner, and looked at the great black-and-white rabbit.
“Isn’t he beautiful! Oh, do look at him listening! Doesn’t he look silly!” she laughed quickly, then added “Oh, do let’s do him listening, do let us, he listens with so much of himself;—don’t you darling Bismarck?”
“Can we take him out?” said Gudrun.