“And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?” asked Gerald.
“They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,” Loerke repeated impatiently. “I don’t find them beautiful.”
“You are an epicure,” said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh.
“And what about men?” asked Gudrun suddenly.
“Yes, they are good at all ages,” replied Loerke. “A man should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.”
Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb.
Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her, like a miracle, that she might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow, as if there were no beyond.
Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away beyond, below her, lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted wonderful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain-tops was not universal! One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away.
She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow-world, the terrible, static ice-built mountain tops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell its earthy fecundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds.
She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed.