'To my hand?' said Gerald. 'I trapped it in some machinery.'
'Ugh!' said Ursula. 'And did it hurt much?'
'Yes,' he said. 'It did at the time. It's getting better now. It
crushed the fingers.'
'Oh,' cried Ursula, as if in pain, 'I hate people who hurt themselves.
I can FEEL it.' And she shook her hand.
'What do you want?' said Birkin.
The two men carried down the slim brown boat, and set it on the water.
'You're quite sure you'll be safe in it?' Gerald asked.
'Quite sure,' said Gudrun. 'I wouldn't be so mean as to take it, if
there was the slightest doubt. But I've had a canoe at Arundel, and I
assure you I'm perfectly safe.'
So saying, having given her word like a man, she and Ursula entered the
frail craft, and pushed gently off. The two men stood watching them.
Gudrun was paddling. She knew the men were watching her, and it made
her slow and rather clumsy. The colour flew in her face like a flag.
'Thanks awfully,' she called back to him, from the water, as the boat
slid away. 'It's lovely--like sitting in a leaf.'
He laughed at the fancy. Her voice was shrill and strange, calling from
the distance. He watched her as she paddled away. There was something
childlike about her, trustful and deferential, like a child. He watched
her all the while, as she rowed. And to Gudrun it was a real delight,
in make-belief, to be the childlike, clinging woman to the man who
stood there on the quay, so good-looking and efficient in his white
clothes, and moreover the most important man she knew at the moment.
She did not take any notice of the wavering, indistinct, lambent
Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a time occupied the field
of her attention.
The boat rustled lightly along the water. They passed the bathers whose
striped tents stood between the willows of the meadow's edge, and drew
along the open shore, past the meadows that sloped golden in the light
of the already late afternoon. Other boats were stealing under the
wooded shore opposite, they could hear people's laughter and voices.
But Gudrun rowed on towards the clump of trees that balanced perfect in
the distance, in the golden light.
The sisters found a little place where a tiny stream flowed into the
lake, with reeds and flowery marsh of pink willow herb, and a gravelly
bank to the side. Here they ran delicately ashore, with their frail
boat, the two girls took off their shoes and stockings and went through
the water's edge to the grass. The tiny ripples of the lake were warm
and clear, they lifted their boat on to the bank, and looked round with
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