The Rainbow

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.