get
the credit of other people's brains."

He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she became
alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains or not,
he was interesting. His directness attracted her, his
independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his life
over against hers.

"I don't think brains matter," she said.

"What does matter then?" came her Uncle Tom's intimate,
caressing, half-jeering voice.

She turned to him.

"It matters whether people have courage or not," she
said.

"Courage for what?" asked her uncle.

"For everything."

Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father
sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was
speaking for him.

"Everything's nothing," laughed her uncle.

She disliked him at that moment.

"She doesn't practice what she preaches," said her father,
stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. "She
has courage for mighty little."

But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His
face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick
nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his brown
hair was soft and thick as silk, he had a slight moustache. His
skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her
Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed uncouth. Yet he
reminded her of her father, only he was finer, and he seemed to
be shining. And his face was almost ugly.

He seemed simply acquiescent in the fact of his own being, as
if he were beyond any change or question. He was himself. There
was a sense of fatality about him that fascinated her. He made
no effort to prove himself to other people. Let it be accepted
for what it was, his own being. In its isolation it made no
excuse or explanation for itself.

So he seemed perfectly, even fatally established, he did not
asked to be rendered before he could exist, before he could have
relationship with another person.

This attracted Ursula very much. She was so used to unsure
people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her
Uncle Tom was always more or less what the other person would
have him. In consequence, one never knew the real Uncle Tom,
only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux with a more or less consistent
appearance.

But, let Skrebensky do what he would, betray himself
entirely, he betrayed himself always upon his own
responsibility. He permitted no question about himself. He was
irrevocable in hi