THE LAST LAUGH by D. H. Lawrence Author of “Women in Love” There was a little snow on the ground, and the church clock had just struck midnight. Hampstead in the night of winter for once was looking pretty, with clean, white earth and lamps for moon, and dark sky above the lamps. A confused little sound of voices, a gleam of hidden yellow light. And then the garden door of a tall, dark Georgian house suddenly opened, and three people confusedly emerged. A girl in a dark-blue coat and fur turban, very erect; a fellow with a little dispatch case, slouching; a thin man with a red beard, bareheaded, peering out of the gateway down the hill that swung in a curve downward toward London. “Look at it! A new world!” cried the man in the beard ironically, as he stood on the step and peered out. “No, Lorenzo! It’s only whitewash!” cried the young man in the overcoat. His voice was handsome, resonant, plangent, with a weary, sardonic touch. As he turned back, his face was dark in shadow. The girl with the erect, alert head, like a bird, turned back to the two men. “What was that?” she asked, in her quick, quiet voice. “Lorenzo says it’s a new world. I say it’s only whitewash,” cried the man in the street. She stood still and lifted her woolly, gloved finger. She was deaf and was taking it in. Yes, she had got it. She gave a quick, chuckling laugh, glanced very quickly at the man in the bowler hat, then back at the man in the stucco gateway, who was grinning like a satyr and waving good-by. “Good-by, Lorenzo!” came the resonant, weary cry of the man in the bowler hat. “Good-by!” came the sharp, night-bird call of the girl. The green gate slammed, then the inner door. The two were alone in the street, save for the policeman at the corner. The road curved steeply downhill. “You’d better mind how you _step_!” shouted the man in the bowler hat, leaning near the erect, sharp girl, and slouching in his walk. She paused a moment, to make sure what he had said. “Don’t mind me, I’m quite all right. Mind yourself!” she said quickly. At that very moment he gave a wild lurch on the slippery snow, but managed to save himself from falling. She watched him, on tiptoes of alertness. His bowler hat bounced away in the thin snow. They were under a lamp near the curve. As he ducked for his hat he showed a bald spot, just like a tonsure, among his dark, thin, rather curly hair. And when he looked up at her, with his thick, black brows sardonically arched, and his rather hooked nose self-derisive, jamming his hat on again, he seemed like a satanic young priest. His face had beautiful lines, like a faun, and a doubtful, martyred expression. A sort of faun on the cross, with all the malice of the complication. “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, in her quick, cool, unemotional way. “No!” he shouted derisively. “Give me the machine, won’t you?” she said, holding out her woolly hand. “I believe I’m safer.” “Do you _want_ it?” he shouted.