 »when it
reaches that point, I shall do away with her.« And he trembled delicately in
every limb, in anticipation, as he trembled in his most violent accesses of
passionate approach to her, trembling with too much desire.
    She had a curious sort of allegiance with Loerke, all the while now,
something insidious and traitorous. Gerald knew of it. But in the unnatural
state of patience, and the unwillingness to harden himself against her, in which
he found himself, he took no notice, although her soft kindliness to the other
man, whom he hated as a noxious insect, made him shiver again with an access of
the strange shuddering that came over him repeatedly.
    He left her alone only when he went ski-ing, a sport he loved, and which she
did not practice. Then he seemed to sweep out of life, to be a projectile into
the beyond. And often, when he went away, she talked to the little German
sculptor. They had an invariable topic, in their art.
    They were almost of the same ideas. He hated Mestrovic, was not satisfied
with the Futurists, he liked the West African wooden figures, the Aztec art,
Mexican and Central American. He saw the grotesque, and a curious sort of
mechanical motion intoxicated him, a confusion in nature. They had a curious
game with each other, Gudrun and Loerke, of infinite suggestivity, strange and
leering, as if they had some esoteric understanding of life, that they alone
were initiated into the fearful central secrets, that the world dared not know.
Their whole correspondence was in a strange, barely comprehensible suggestivity,
they kindled themselves at the subtle lust of the Egyptians or the Mexicans. The
whole game was one of subtle inter-suggestivity, and they wanted to keep it on
the plane of suggestion. From their verbal and physical nuances they got the
highest satisfaction in the nerves, from a queer interchange of half-suggested
ideas, looks, expressions and gestures, which were quite intolerable, though
incomprehensible, to Gerald. He had no terms in which to think of their
commerce, his terms were much too gross.
    The suggestion of primitive art was their refuge, and the inner mysteries of
sensation their object of worship. Art and Life were to them the Reality and the
Unreality.
    »Of course,« said Gudrun, »life doesn't really matter - it is one's art
which is central. What one does in one's life has peu de rapport, it doesn't
signify much.«
    »Yes, that is so
