There was a moment’s pause.

‘Why not?’ asked Gerald.

Loerke shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t find them interesting—or beautiful—they are no good to me, for my work.’

‘Do you mean to say a woman isn’t beautiful after she is twenty?’ asked Gerald.

‘For me, no. Before twenty, she is small and fresh and tender and slight. After that—let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeoise—so are they all.’

‘And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?’ asked Gerald.

‘They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,’ Loerke repeated impatiently. ‘I don’t find them beautiful.’

‘You are an epicure,’ said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh.

‘And what about men?’ asked Gudrun suddenly.

‘Yes, they are good at all ages,’ replied Loerke. ‘A man should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.’

Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb.

Suddenly she wanted to go away. It It occurred to her, like a miracle, that she might go away into another world. She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow, as if there were no beyond.

Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away beyond, below her, lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted wonderful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain–tops was not universal! One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away.

She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow–world, the terrible, static ice–built mountain tops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell its earthy fecundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds.

She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed.

‘Rupert,’ she said, bursting in on him. ‘I want to go away.’

He looked up at her slowly.

‘Do you?’ he replied mildly.

She sat by him und put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was so little surprised.

‘Don’t YOU?’ she asked troubled.

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure I do.’

She sat up, suddenly erect.

‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘I hate the snow, and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.’

On the morning which followed his interview with the Mormon Prophet, John Ferrier went in to Salt Lake City, and having found his acquaintance, who was bound for the Nevada Mountains, he entrusted him with his message to Jefferson Hope. In it he told the young man of the imminent danger which threatened them, and how necessary it was that he should return. Having done thus he felt easier in his mind, and returned home with a lighter heart.

As he approached his farm, he was surprised to see a horse hitched to each of the posts of the gate. Still more surprised was he on the entering to find two young men in possession of his sitting-room. One, with a long pale face, was leaning back in the rocking-chair, with his feet cocked up upon the stove. The other, a bull-necked youth with coarse, bloated features, was standing in front of the window with his hands in his pockets whistling a popular hymn. Both of them nodded to Ferrier as he entered, and the one in the rocking-chair commenced the conversation.

“Maybe you don’t know us,” he said. “This here is the son of Elder Drebber, and I’m Joseph Stangerson, who travelled with you in the desert when the Lord stretched out His hand and gathered you into the true fold.”

“As He will all the nations in His own good time,” said the other in a nasal voice; “He grindeth slowly but exceeding small.”

John Ferrier bowed coldly. He had guessed who his visitors were.

“We have come,” continued Stangerson, “at the advice of our fathers to solicit the hand of your daughter for whichever of us may seem good to you and to her. As I have but four wives and Brother Drebber here has seven, it appears to me that my claim is the stronger one.”

“Nay, nay, Brother Stangerson,” cried the other; “the question is not how many wives we have, but how many we can keep. My father has now given over his mills to me, and I am the richer man.”

“But my prospects are better,” said the other, warmly. “When the Lord removes my father, I shall have his tanning yard and his leather factory. Then I am your elder, and am higher in the Church.”

“It will be for the maiden to decide,” rejoined young Drebber, smirking at his own reflection in the glass. “We will leave it all to her decision.”

During this dialogue John Ferrier had stood fuming in the doorway, hardly able to keep his riding-whip from the backs of his two visitors.

“Look here,” he said at last, striding up to them, “when my daughter summons you, you can come, but until then I don’t want to see your faces again.”

The two young Mormons stared at him in amazement. In their eyes this competition between them for the maiden’s hand was the highest of honours both to her and her father.

“There are two ways out of the room,” cried Ferrier; “there is the door, and there is the window. Which do you care to use?”

His brown face looked so savage, and his gaunt hands so threatening, that his visitors sprang to their feet and beat a hurried retreat. The old farmer followed them to the door.