'It is Gerald Crich,' said Ursula.
'I know,' replied Gudrun.
And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the face which washed
up and down on the flood, as he swam steadily. From his separate
element he saw them and he exulted to himself because of his own
advantage, his possession of a world to himself. He was immune and
perfect. He loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violent
impulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him up. He
could see the girls watching him a way off, outside, and that pleased
him. He lifted his arm from the water, in a sign to them.
'He is waving,' said Ursula.
'Yes,' replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved again, with a strange
movement of recognition across the difference.
'Like a Nibelung,' laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, only stood
still looking over the water.
Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, with a side
stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in the middle of the waters,
which he had all to himself. He exulted in his isolation in the new
element, unquestioned and unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with
his legs and all his body, without bond or connection anywhere, just
himself in the watery world.
Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary possession of
pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that
she felt herself as if damned, out there on the high-road.
'God, what it is to be a man!' she cried.
'What?' exclaimed Ursula in surprise.
'The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!' cried Gudrun, strangely
flushed and brilliant. 'You're a man, you want to do a thing, you do
it. You haven't the THOUSAND obstacles a woman has in front of her.' Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun's mind, to occasion this outburst.
She could not understand.
'What do you want to do?' she asked.
'Nothing,' cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. 'But supposing I did.
Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one of
the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump
in. But isn't it RIDICULOUS, doesn't it simply prevent our living!' She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was puzzled.
The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing between the
trees just below Shortlands. They looked up at the long, low house, dim
and glamorous in the wet morning, its cedar trees slanting before the
windows. Gudrun seemed to be studying it closely.