Sketch-book

She started out of her trance, hearing the knocking of oars. She looked
round. There was a boat with a gaudy Japanese parasol, and a man in
white, rowing. The woman was Hermione, and the man was Gerald. She knew
it instantly. And instantly she perished in the keen FRISSON of
anticipation, an electric vibration in her veins, intense, much more
intense than that which was always humming low in the atmosphere of
Beldover.

Gerald was her escape from the heavy slough of the pale, underworld,
automatic colliers. He started out of the mud. He was master. She saw
his back, the movement of his white loins. But not that--it was the
whiteness he seemed to enclose as he bent forwards, rowing. He seemed
to stoop to something. His glistening, whitish hair seemed like the
electricity of the sky.

'There's Gudrun,' came Hermione's voice floating distinct over the
water. 'We will go and speak to her. Do you mind?' Gerald looked round and saw the girl standing by the water's edge,
looking at him. He pulled the boat towards her, magnetically, without
thinking of her. In his world, his conscious world, she was still
nobody. He knew that Hermione had a curious pleasure in treading down
all the social differences, at least apparently, and he left it to her.

'How do you do, Gudrun?' sang Hermione, using the Christian name in the
fashionable manner. 'What are you doing?' 'How do you do, Hermione? I WAS sketching.' 'Were you?' The boat drifted nearer, till the keel ground on the bank.
'May we see? I should like to SO much.' It was no use resisting Hermione's deliberate intention.