It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the Reunionsaal talking
to Loerke. The latter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full
of mischievous humour, as usual.
But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too,
the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if
he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection,
against which he was rebelling.
Loerke had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand,
had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun
wanted to talk to Loerke. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his
view of his art. And his figure attracted her. There was the look of a
little wastrel about him, that intrigued her, and an old man's look,
that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a
quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that
marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of
mischievous word-jokes, that were sometimes very clever, but which
often were not.
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