She held on to him as they went sheering down over the keen slope. She
felt as if her senses were being whetted on some fine grindstone, that
was keen as flame. The snow sprinted on either side, like sparks from a
blade that is being sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter,
swifter, in pure flame the white slope flew against her, and she fused
like one molten, dancing globule, rushed through a white intensity.
Then there was a great swerve at the bottom, when they swung as it were
in a fall to earth, in the diminishing motion.
They came to rest. But when she rose to her feet, she could not stand.
She gave a strange cry, turned and clung to him, sinking her face on
his breast, fainting in him. Utter oblivion came over her, as she lay
for a few moments abandoned against him.
'What is it?' he was saying. 'Was it too much for you?' But she heard nothing.
When she came to, she stood up and looked round, astonished. Her face
was white, her eyes brilliant and large.
'What is it?' he repeated. 'Did it upset you?' She looked at him with her brilliant eyes that seemed to have undergone
some transfiguration, and she laughed, with a terrible merriment.
'No,' she cried, with triumphant joy. 'It was the complete moment of my
life.' And she looked at him with her dazzling, overweening laughter, like one
possessed. A fine blade seemed to enter his heart, but he did not care,
or take any notice.
But they climbed up the slope again, and they flew down through the
white flame again, splendidly, splendidly. Gudrun was laughing and
flashing, powdered with snow-crystals, Gerald worked perfectly. He felt
he could guide the toboggan to a hair-breadth, almost he could make it
pierce into the air and right into the very heart of the sky. It seemed
to him the flying sledge was but his strength spread out, he had but to
move his arms, the motion was his own. They explored the great slopes,
to find another slide. He felt there must be something better than they
had known. And he found what he desired, a perfect long, fierce sweep,
sheering past the foot of a rock and into the trees at the base. It was
dangerous, he knew. But then he knew also he would direct the sledge
between his fingers.
The first days passed in an ecstasy of physical motion, sleighing,
skiing, skating, moving in an intensity of speed and white light that
surpassed life itself, and carried the souls of the human beings beyond
into an inhuman abstraction of velocity and weight and eternal, frozen
snow.