firm
grasp. 'I shall come again. I miss you down at the mill.'

'I'll be there in a few days,' said Birkin.

The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald's, that were keen as a
hawk's, were suffused now with warm light and with unadmitted love,
Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, unsounded and unknown, yet
with a kind of warmth, that seemed to flow over Gerald's brain like a
fertile sleep.

'Good-bye then. There's nothing I can do for you?'

'Nothing, thanks.'

Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man move out of the
door, the bright head was gone, he turned over to sleep.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE

In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. It
seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he had
lost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had her
own friends, her own activities, her own life. She turned back to the
old ways with zest, away from him.

And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious of
Gerald Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almost
indifferent to the thought of him. She was nursing new schemes for
going away and trying a new form of life. All the time, there was
something in her urging her to avoid the final establishing of a
relationship with Gerald. She felt it would be wiser and better to have
no more than a casual acquaintance with him.

She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend who
was a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whose
hobby was jewel-making. The emotional, rather rootless life of the
Russians appealed to her. She did not want to go to Paris. Paris was
dry, and essentially boring. She would like to go to Rome, Munich,
Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow. She had a friend in St
Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, asking
about rooms.

She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save,
and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in
various shows. She knew she could become quite the 'go' if she went to
London. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy
pounds, of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as soon as
she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent
placidity and calm, was profoundly restless.

The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey.
Mrs Ki