She was as happy as the
sun that has just opened above clouds. And everybody seemed so admiring
and radiant, it was perfect.
After dinner she wanted to go out for a minute, to look at the world.
The company tried to dissuade her--it was so terribly cold. But just to
look, she said.
They all four wrapped up warmly, and found themselves in a vague,
unsubstantial outdoors of dim snow and ghosts of an upper-world, that
made strange shadows before the stars. It was indeed cold, bruisingly,
frighteningly, unnaturally cold. Ursula could not believe the air in
her nostrils. It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense
murderous coldness.
Yet it was wonderful, an intoxication, a silence of dim, unrealised
snow, of the invisible intervening between her and the visible, between
her and the flashing stars. She could see Orion sloping up. How
wonderful he was, wonderful enough to make one cry aloud.
And all around was this cradle of snow, and there was firm snow
underfoot, that struck with heavy cold through her boot-soles.
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