Women in Love

'And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than see them

getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see everywhere nowadays.

I'd rather bury them--' 'Yes but, you see,' said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored again by

this new turn, 'they won't give either you or me the chance to bury

them, because they're not to be buried.' Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger.

'Now, Mr Birkin,' he said, 'I don't know what you've come here for, and

I don't know what you're asking for. But my daughters are my

daughters--and it's my business to look after them while I can.' Birkin's brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery. But

he remained perfectly stiff and still. There was a pause.

'I've nothing against your marrying Ursula,' Brangwen began at length.

'It's got nothing to do with me, she'll do as she likes, me or no me.' Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting go his

consciousness. After all, what good was this? It was hopeless to keep

it up. He would sit on till Ursula came home, then speak to her, then

go away. He would not accept trouble at the hands of her father. It was

all unnecessary, and he himself need not have provoked it.

The two men sat in complete silence, Birkin almost unconscious of his

own whereabouts. He had come to ask her to marry him--well then, he

would wait on, and ask her. As for what she said, whether she accepted

or not, he did not think about it. He would say what he had come to

say, and that was all he was conscious of. He accepted the complete

insignificance of this household, for him. But everything now was as if

fated. He could see one thing ahead, and no more. From the rest, he was

absolved entirely for the time being. It had to be left to fate and

chance to resolve the issues.

At length they heard the gate. They saw her coming up the steps with a

bundle of books under her arm. Her face was bright and abstracted as

usual, with the abstraction, that look of being not quite THERE, not

quite present to the facts of reality, that galled her father so much.

She had a maddening faculty of assuming a light of her own, which

excluded the reality, and within which she looked radiant as if in

sunshine.

They heard her go into the dining-room, and drop her armful of books on

the table.

'Did you bring me that Girl's Own?' cried Rosalind.