Sketch-book

One morning the sisters were sketching by the side of Willey Water, at
the remote end of the lake. Gudrun had waded out to a gravelly shoal,
and was seated like a Buddhist, staring fixedly at the water-plants
that rose succulent from the mud of the low shores. What she could see
was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill,
water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and
turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark
lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze. But
she could feel their turgid fleshy structure as in a sensuous vision,
she KNEW how they rose out of the mud, she KNEW how they thrust out
from themselves, how they stood stiff and succulent against the air.

Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were dozens near
the water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a
jewel-life, a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and
breathing with his soft wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal
sunshine; two white ones wrestling in the low air; there was a halo
round them; ah, when they came tumbling nearer they were orangetips,
and it was the orange that had made the halo. Ursula rose and drifted
away, unconscious like the butterflies.

Gudrun, absorbed in a stupor of apprehension of surging water-plants,
sat crouched on the shoal, drawing, not looking up for a long time, and
then staring unconsciously, absorbedly at the rigid, naked, succulent
stems. Her feet were bare, her hat lay on the bank opposite.