He listened with a shade of distaste to her rhapsody, then he said: 'For all that, I don't like it. Their nationalism is just
industrialism--that and a shallow jealousy I detest so much.' 'I think you are wrong--I think you are wrong--' said Hermione. 'It
seems to me purely spontaneous and beautiful, the modern Italian's
PASSION, for it is a passion, for Italy, L'Italia--' 'Do you know Italy well?' Ursula asked of Hermione. Hermione hated to
be broken in upon in this manner. Yet she answered mildly: 'Yes, pretty well. I spent several years of my girlhood there, with my
mother. My mother died in Florence.' 'Oh.' There was a pause, painful to Ursula and to Birkin. Hermione however
seemed abstracted and calm. Birkin was white, his eyes glowed as if he
were in a fever, he was far too over-wrought. How Ursula suffered in
this tense atmosphere of strained wills! Her head seemed bound round by
iron bands.
Birkin rang the bell for tea. They could not wait for Gudrun any
longer. When the door was opened, the cat walked in.
'Micio! Micio!' called Hermione, in her slow, deliberate sing-song. The
young cat turned to look at her, then, with his slow and stately walk
he advanced to her side.
'Vieni--vieni qua,' Hermione was saying, in her strange caressive,
protective voice, as if she were always the elder, the mother superior.
'Vieni dire Buon' Giorno alla zia. Mi ricorde, mi ricorde bene--non he
vero, piccolo? E vero che mi ricordi? E vero?' And slowly she rubbed
his head, slowly and with ironic indifference.
'Does he understand Italian?' said Ursula, who knew nothing of the
language.
'Yes,' said Hermione at length. 'His mother was Italian. She was born
in my waste-paper basket in Florence, on the morning of Rupert's
birthday. She was his birthday present.' Tea was brought in. Birkin poured out for them. It was strange how
inviolable was the intimacy which existed between him and Hermione.
Ursula felt that she was an outsider. The very tea-cups and the old
silver was a bond between Hermione and Birkin. It seemed to belong to
an old, past world which they had inhabited together, and in which
Ursula was a foreigner. She was almost a parvenue in their old cultured
milieu. Her convention was not their convention, their standards were
not her standards. But theirs were established, they had the sanction
and the grace of age. He and she together, Hermione and Birkin, were
people of the same old tradition, the same withered deadening culture.
And she, Ursula, was an intruder. So they always made her feel.