“Oh, he’s so horrid!” cried Winifred, almost frantic.
He held out his nervous, sinewy hand and took the rabbit by the ears, from Gudrun.
“It’s most fearfully strong,” she cried, in a high voice, like the crying a seagull, strange and vindictive.
The rabbit made itself into a ball in the air, and lashed out, flinging itself into a bow. It really seemed demoniacal. Gudrun saw Gerald’s body tighten, saw a sharp blindness come into his eyes.
“I know these beggars of old,” he said.
The long, demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man’s body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was gleaming with a smile.
“You wouldn’t think there was all that force in a rabbit,” he said, looking at Gudrun. And he saw her eyes black as night in her pallid face, she looked almost unearthly. The scream of the rabbit, after the violent tussle, seemed to have torn the veil of her consciousness. He looked at her, and the whitish, electric gleam in his face intensified.
“I don’t really like him,” Winifred was crooning. “I don’t care for him as I do for Loozie. He’s hateful really.”
A smile twisted Gudrun’s face, as she recovered. She knew she was revealed. “Don’t they make the most fearful noise when they scream?” she cried, the high note in her voice, like a seagull’s cry.
“Abominable,” he said.