Women in Love

'See!' said the Contessa.

'Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the

street,' she read.

Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the

Baronet's, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.

'What is the book?' asked Alexander, promptly.

'Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,' said the little foreigner, pronouncing

every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself.

'An old American edition,' said Birkin.

'Ha!--of course--translated from the French,' said Alexander, with a

fine declamatory voice. 'Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans

la rue.' He looked brightly round the company.

'I wonder what the "hurriedly" was,' said Ursula.

They all began to guess.

And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a

large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly.

After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.

'Would you like to come for a walk?' said Hermione to each of them, one

by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners

marshalled for exercise. Birkin only refused.

'Will you come for a walk, Rupert?' 'No, Hermione.' 'But are you SURE?' 'Quite sure.' There was a second's hesitation.

'And why not?' sang Hermione's question. It made her blood run sharp,

to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to

walk with her in the park.

'Because I don't like trooping off in a gang,' he said.

Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she said, with a

curious stray calm: 'Then we'll leave a little boy behind, if he's sulky.' And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it merely made

him stiff.

She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to wave her

handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with laughter, singing out: 'Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.' 'Good-bye, impudent hag,' he said to himself.

They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show them the wild

daffodils on a little slope. 'This way, this way,' sang her leisurely

voice at intervals. And they had all to come this way. The daffodils

were pretty, but who could see them? Ursula was stiff all over with

resentment by this time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun,

mocking and objective, watched and registered everything.

They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the stag, as if he

too were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. He was male, so she

must exert some kind of power over him. They trailed home by the

fish-ponds, and Hermione told them about the quarrel of two male swans,

who had striven for the love of the one lady. She chuckled and laughed

as she told how the ousted lover had sat with his head buried under his

wing, on the gravel.