was brought up
short. But he recovered himself.

'Tell me, only tell me,' he reiterated in a dangerous narrowed
voice--'tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.'

'I am not fascinated,' she said, with cold repelling innocence.

'Yes, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, like a bird
gaping ready to fall down its throat.'

She looked at him with black fury.

'I don't choose to be discussed by you,' she said.

'It doesn't matter whether you choose or not,' he replied, 'that
doesn't alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and kiss the
feet of that little insect. And I don't want to prevent you--do it,
fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is that
fascinates you--what is it?'

She was silent, suffused with black rage.

'How DARE you come brow-beating me,' she cried, 'how dare you, you
little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you think?'

His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that
she was in his power--the wolf. And because she was in his power, she
hated him with a power that she wondered did not kill him. In her will
she killed him as he stood, effaced him.

'It is not a question of right,' said Gerald, sitting down on a chair.
She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical
body moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with
fatal contempt.

'It's not a question of my right over you--though I HAVE some right,
remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that
subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is
that brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to
know what you creep after.'

She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round.

'Do you?' she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. 'Do you want
to know what it is in him? It's because he has some understanding of a
woman, because he is not stupid. That's why it is.'

A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald's face.

'But what understanding is it?' he said. 'The understanding of a flea,
a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you crawl abject before the
understanding of a flea?'

There passed through Gudrun's mind Blake's representation of the soul
of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake was a clown too. But
it was necessary to answer Gerald.

'Don't you think the understanding of a flea is more interesting than