The clinging, heavy, muddy question weighed on Ursula
intolerably.
"Has he asked you?" she said, using all her might of hard
resistance.
"He's asked me," said Winifred. "Do you want me to marry him,
Ursula?"
"Yes," said Ursula.
The arms tightened more on her.
"I knew you did, my sweet--and I will marry him. You're
fond of him, aren't you?"
"I've been awfully fond of him--ever since I was
a child."
"I know--I know. I can see what you like in him. He is a
man by himself, he has something apart from the rest."
"Yes," said Ursula.
"But he's not like you, my dear--ha, he's not as good as
you. There's something even objectionable in him--his thick
thighs--"
Ursula was silent.
"But I'll marry him, my dear--it will be best. Now say
you love me."
A sort of profession was extorted out of the girl.
Nevertheless her mistress went away sighing, to weep in her own
chamber.
In two days' time Ursula left Wiggiston. Miss Inger went to
Nottingham. There was an engagement between her and Tom
Brangwen, which the uncle seemed to vaunt as if it were an
assurance of his validity.
Brangwen and Winifred Inger continued engaged for another
term. Then they married. Brangwen had reached the age when he
wanted children. He wanted children. Neither marriage nor the
domestic establishment meant anything to him. He wanted to
propagate himself. He knew what he was doing. He had the
instinct of a growing inertia, of a thing that chooses its place
of rest in which to lapse into apathy, complete, profound
indifference. He would let the machinery carry him; husband,
father, pit-manager, warm clay lifted through the recurrent
action of day after day by the great machine from which it
derived its motion. As for Winifred, she was an educated woman,
and of the same sort as himself. She would make a good
companion. She was his mate.