'
Gudrun glanced at him, afraid.
There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be said. At
length Ursula asked in a small voice:
'Have you seen him?'
He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did not trouble to
answer.
'Have you seen him?' she repeated.
'I have,' he said, coldly.
Then he looked at Gudrun.
'Have you done anything?' he said.
'Nothing,' she replied, 'nothing.'
She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement.
'Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sitting on the
sledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn, that you had words, and Gerald
walked away. What were the words about? I had better know, so that I
can satisfy the authorities, if necessary.'
Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with trouble.
'There weren't even any words,' she said. 'He knocked Loerke down and
stunned him, he half strangled me, then he went away.'
To herself she was saying:
'A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!' And she turned
ironically away, because she knew that the fight had been between
Gerald and herself and that the presence of the third party was a mere
contingency--an inevitable contingency perhaps, but a contingency none
the less.
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