The exultation in his voice was like a sweetish, poisonous drug to her.
Did she then mean so much to him! She sipped the poison.
`Are you happier?' she asked, wistfully.
`Much better,' he said, in the same exultant voice, `and I was rather far gone.'
She nestled against him.He felt her all soft and warm, she was the rich, lovely substance of his being.The warmth and motion of her walk suffused through him wonderfully.
`I'm so glad if I help you,' she said.
`Yes,' he answered.`There's nobody else could do it, if you wouldn't.'
`That is true,' she said to herself, with a thrill of strange, fatal elation.
As they walked, he seemed to lift her nearer and nearer to himself, till she moved upon the firm vehicle of his body.
He was so strong, so sustaining, and he could not be opposed.She drifted along in a wonderful interfusion of physical motion, down the dark, blowy hillside.Far across shone the little yellow lights of Beldover, many of them, spread in a thick patch on another dark hill.But he and she were walking in perfect, isolated darkness, outside the world.
`But how much do you care for me!' came her voice, almost querulous.
`You see, I don't know, I don't understand!'
`How much!' His voice rang with a painful elation.`I don't know either -- but everything.' He was startled by his own declaration.It was true.
So he stripped himself of every safeguard, in making this admission to her.He cared everything for her -- she was everything.
`But I can't believe it,' said her low voice, amazed, trembling.She was trembling with doubt and exultance.This was the thing she wanted to hear, only this.Yet now she heard it, heard the strange clapping vibration of truth in his voice as he said it, she could not believe.She could not believe -- she did not believe.Yet she believed, triumphantly, with fatal exultance.
`Why not?' he said.`Why don't you believe it? It's true.It is true, as we stand at this moment --' he stood still with her in the wind; `Icare for nothing on earth, or in heaven, outside this spot where we are.
And it isn't my own presence I care about, it is all yours.I'd sell my soul a hundred times -- but I couldn't bear not to have you here.I couldn't bear to be alone.My brain would burst.It is true.' He drew her closer to him, with definite movement.
`No,' she murmured, afraid.Yet this was what she wanted.Why did she so lose courage?
They resumed their strange walk.They were such strangers -- and yet they were so frightfully, unthinkably near.It was like a madness.Yet it was what she wanted, it was what she wanted.They had descended the hill, and now they were coming to the square arch where the road passed under the colliery railway.The arch, Gudrun knew, had walls of squared stone, mossy on one side with water that trickled down, dry on the other side.She had stood under it to hear the train rumble thundering over the logs overhead.And she knew that under this dark and lonely bridge the young colliers stood in the darkness with their sweethearts, in rainy weather.
And so she wanted to stand under the bridge with her sweetheart, and be kissed under the bridge in the invisible darkness.Her steps dragged as she drew near.
So, under the bridge, they came to a standstill, and he lifted her upon his breast.His body vibrated taut and powerful as he closed upon her and crushed her, breathless and dazed and destroyed, crushed her upon his breast.
Ah, it was terrible, and perfect.Under this bridge, the colliers pressed their lovers to their breast.And now, under the bridge, the master of them all pressed her to himself? And how much more powerful and terrible was his embrace than theirs, how much more concentrated and supreme his love was, than theirs in the same sort! She felt she would swoon, die, under the vibrating, inhuman tension of his arms and his body -- she would pass away.Then the unthinkable high vibration slackened and became more undulating.He slackened and drew her with him to stand with his back to the wall.
She was almost unconscious.So the colliers' lovers would stand with their backs to the walls, holding their sweethearts and kissing them as she was being kissed.Ah, but would their kisses be fine and powerful as the kisses of the firm-mouthed master? Even the keen, short-cut moustache -- the colliers would not have that.
And the colliers' sweethearts would, like herself, hang their heads back limp over their shoulder, and look out from the dark archway, at the close patch of yellow lights on the unseen hill in the distance, or at the vague form of trees, and at the buildings of the colliery wood-yard, in the other direction.
His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering her into himself, her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, drinking in the suffusion of her physical being, avidly.He lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like wine into a cup.
`This is worth everything,' he said, in a strange, penetrating voice.
So she relaxed, and seemed to melt, to flow into him, as if she were some infinitely warm and precious suffusion filling into his veins, like an intoxicant.Her arms were round his neck, he kissed her and held her perfectly suspended, she was all slack and flowing into him, and he was the firm, strong cup that receives the wine of her life.So she lay cast upon him, stranded, lifted up against him, melting and melting under his kisses, melting into his limbs and bones, as if he were soft iron becoming surcharged with her electric life.
Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone.
So she was passed away and gone in him, and he was perfected.
When she opened her eyes again, and saw the patch of lights in the distance, it seemed to her strange that the world still existed, that she was standing under the bridge resting her head on Gerald's breast.Gerald -- who was he? He was the exquisite adventure, the desirable unknown to her.
