Women in Love

They sat on till Birkin came in and found them together. He felt at

once the antagonism in the atmosphere, something radical and

insuperable, and he bit his lip. But he affected a bluff manner.

'Hello, Hermione, are you back again? How do you feel?' 'Oh, better. And how are you--you don't look well--' 'Oh!--I believe Gudrun and Winnie Crich are coming in to tea. At least

they said they were. We shall be a tea-party. What train did you come

by, Ursula?' It was rather annoying to see him trying to placate both women at once.

Both women watched him, Hermione with deep resentment and pity for him,

Ursula very impatient. He was nervous and apparently in quite good

spirits, chattering the conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed

and indignant at the way he made small-talk; he was adept as any FAT in

Christendom. She became quite stiff, she would not answer. It all

seemed to her so false and so belittling. And still Gudrun did not

appear.

'I think I shall go to Florence for the winter,' said Hermione at

length.

'Will you?' he answered. 'But it is so cold there.' 'Yes, but I shall stay with Palestra. It is quite comfortable.' 'What takes you to Florence?' 'I don't know,' said Hermione slowly. Then she looked at him with her

slow, heavy gaze. 'Barnes is starting his school of aesthetics, and

Olandese is going to give a set of discourses on the Italian national

policy-' 'Both rubbish,' he said.

'No, I don't think so,' said Hermione.

'Which do you admire, then?' 'I admire both. Barnes is a pioneer. And then I am interested in Italy,

in her coming to national consciousness.' 'I wish she'd come to something different from national consciousness,

then,' said Birkin; 'especially as it only means a sort of

commercial-industrial consciousness. I hate Italy and her national

rant. And I think Barnes is an amateur.' Hermione was silent for some moments, in a state of hostility. But yet,

she had got Birkin back again into her world! How subtle her influence

was, she seemed to start his irritable attention into her direction

exclusively, in one minute. He was her creature.

'No,' she said, 'you are wrong.' Then a sort of tension came over her,

she raised her face like the pythoness inspired with oracles, and went

on, in rhapsodic manner: 'Il Sandro mi scrive che ha accolto il piu

grande entusiasmo, tutti i giovani, e fanciulle e ragazzi, sono

tutti--' She went on in Italian, as if, in thinking of the Italians she

thought in their language.