“Not at all,” she cried.
And suddenly the rabbit, which had been crouching as if it were a flower, so still and soft, suddenly burst into life. Round and round the court it went, as if shot from a gun, round and round like a furry meteorite, in a tense hard circle that seemed to bind their brains. They all stood in amazement, smiling uncannily, as if the rabbit were obeying some unknown incantation. Round and round it flew, on the grass under the old red walls like a storm.
And then quite suddenly it settled down, hobbled among the grass, and sat considering, its nose twitching like a bit of fluff in the wind. After having considered for a few minutes, a soft bunch with a black, open eye, which perhaps was looking at them, perhaps was not, it hobbled calmly forward and began to nibble the grass with that mean motion of a rabbit’s quick eating.
“It’s mad,” said Gudrun. “It is most decidedly mad.”
He laughed.
“The question is,” he said, “what is madness? I don’t suppose it is rabbit-mad.”
“Don’t you think it is?” she asked.
“No. That’s what it is to be a rabbit.”
There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face. She looked at him and saw him, and knew that he was initiate as she was initiate. This thwarted her, and contravened her, for the moment.
“God be praised we aren’t rabbits,” she said, in a high, shrill voice.