“Oh is it you?” she said.
“I am glad you are at home,” he said in a low voice, entering the house.
“They are all gone to church.”
He took off his coat and hung it up. The children were peeping at him round the corner.
“Go and get undressed now, Billy and Dora,” said Ursula. “Mother will be back soon, and she’ll be disappointed if you’re not in bed.”
The children, in a sudden angelic mood, retired without a word. Birkin and Ursula went into the drawing-room.
The fire burned low. He looked at her and wondered at the luminous delicacy of her beauty, and the wide shining of her eyes. He watched from a distance, with wonder in his heart, she seemed transfigured with light.
“What have you been doing all day?” he asked her.
“Only sitting about,” she said.
He looked at her. There was a change in her. But she was separate from him. She remained apart, in a kind of brightness. They both sat silent in the soft light of the lamp. He felt he ought to go away again, he ought not to have come. Still he did not gather enough resolution to move. But he was de trop, her mood was absent and separate.
Then there came the voices of the two children calling shyly outside the door, softly, with self-excited timidity:
“Ursula! Ursula!”
She rose and opened the door. On the threshold stood the two children in their long nightgowns, with wide-eyed, angelic faces. They were being very good for the moment, playing the role perfectly of two obedient children.
“Shall you take us to bed!” said Billy, in a loud whisper.
“Why you are angels tonight,” she said softly. “Won’t you come and say good night to Mr. Birkin?”
The children merged shyly into the room, on bare feet. Billy’s face was wide and grinning, but there was a great solemnity of being good in his round blue eyes. Dora, peeping from the floss of her fair hair, hung back like some tiny Dryad, that has no soul.
“Will you say good night to me?” asked Birkin, in a voice that was strangely soft and smooth. Dora drifted away at once, like a leaf lifted on a breath of wind. But Billy went softly forward, slow and willing, lifting his pinched-up mouth implicitly to be kissed. Ursula watched the full, gathered lips of the man gently touch those of the boy, so gently. Then Birkin lifted his fingers and touched the boy’s round, confiding cheek, with a faint touch of love. Neither spoke. Billy seemed angelic like a cherub boy, or like an acolyte, Birkin was a tall, grave angel looking down to him.
“Are you going to be kissed?” Ursula broke in, speaking to the little girl. But Dora edged away like a tiny Dryad that will not be touched.
“Won’t you say good night to Mr. Birkin? Go, he’s waiting for you,” said Ursula. But the girl-child only made a little motion away from him.
“Silly Dora, silly Dora!” said Ursula.
Birkin felt some mistrust and antagonism in the small child. He could not understand it.
“Come then,” said Ursula. “Let us go before mother comes.”
“Who’ll hear us say our prayers?” asked Billy anxiously.
“Whom you like.”
“Won’t you?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Ursula?”
“Well Billy?”
“Is it whom you like?”
“That’s it.”
“Well what is whom?”
“It’s the accusative of who.”
There was a moment’s contemplative silence, then the confiding:
“Is it?”
Birkin smiled to himself as he sat by the fire. When Ursula came down he sat motionless, with his arms on his knees. She saw him, how he was motionless and ageless, like some crouching idol, some image of a deathly religion. He looked round at her, and his face, very pale and unreal, seemed to gleam with a whiteness almost phosphorescent.
“Don’t you feel well?” she asked, in indefinable repulsion.
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“But don’t you know without thinking about it?”
He looked at her, his eyes dark and swift, and he saw her revulsion. He did not answer her question.
“Don’t you know whether you are unwell or not, without thinking about it?” she persisted.
“Not always,” he said coldly.
“But don’t you think that’s very wicked?”
“Wicked?”
“Yes. I think it’s criminal to have so little connection with your own body that you don’t even know when you are ill.”
He looked at her darkly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why don’t you stay in bed when you are seedy? You look perfectly ghastly.”
“Offensively so?” he asked ironically.
“Yes, quite offensive. Quite repelling.”
“Ah!! Well that’s unfortunate.”
“And it’s raining, and it’s a horrible night. Really, you shouldn’t be forgiven for treating your body like it—you ought to suffer, a man who takes as little notice of his body as that.”
“—takes as little notice of his body as that,” he echoed mechanically.
This cut her short, and there was silence.
The others came in from church, and the two had the girls to face, then the mother and Gudrun, and then the father and the boy.
“Good evening,” said Brangwen, faintly surprised. “Came to see me, did you?”
“No,” said Birkin, “not about anything, in particular, that is. The day was dismal, and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I called in.”
“It has been a depressing day,” said Mrs. Brangwen sympathetically. At that moment the voices of the children were heard calling from upstairs: “Mother! Mother!” She lifted her face and answered mildly into the distance: “I shall come up to you in a minute, Doysie.” Then to Birkin: “There is nothing fresh at Shortlands, I suppose? Ah,” she sighed, “no, poor things, I should think not.”
“You’ve been over there today, I suppose?” asked the father.
“Gerald came round to tea with me, and I walked back with him. The house is overexcited and unwholesome, I thought.”
“I should think they were people who hadn’t much restraint,” said Gudrun.
“Or too much,” Birkin answered.
“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Gudrun, almost vindictively, “one or the other.”
“They all feel they ought to behave in some unnatural fashion,” said Birkin. “When people are in grief, they would do better to cover their faces and keep
