anything like Sir Joshua? But really, Ursula, he belongs to
the primeval world, when great lizards crawled about.'

Gudrun looked in dismay on Sir Joshua, who stood up to the breast in
the water, his long, greyish hair washed down into his eyes, his neck
set into thick, crude shoulders. He was talking to Miss Bradley, who,
seated on the bank above, plump and big and wet, looked as if she might
roll and slither in the water almost like one of the slithering
sealions in the Zoo.

Ursula watched in silence. Gerald was laughing happily, between
Hermione and the Italian. He reminded her of Dionysos, because his hair
was really yellow, his figure so full and laughing. Hermione, in her
large, stiff, sinister grace, leaned near him, frightening, as if she
were not responsible for what she might do. He knew a certain danger in
her, a convulsive madness. But he only laughed the more, turning often
to the little Countess, who was flashing up her face at him.

They all dropped into the water, and were swimming together like a
shoal of seals. Hermione was powerful and unconscious in the water,
large and slow and powerful. Palestra was quick and silent as a water
rat, Gerald wavered and flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one
after the other, they waded out, and went up to the house.

But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun.

'You don't like the water?' he said.

She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he stood
before her negligently, the water standing in beads all over his skin.

'I like it very much,' she replied.

He paused, expecting some sort of explanation.

'And you swim?'

'Yes, I swim.'

Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel
something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time.

'Why wouldn't you bathe?' he asked her again, later, when he was once
more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

'Because I didn't like the crowd,' she replied.

He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The
flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she
signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards,
fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one
that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever
they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was bound to
strive to com