iced them before?' he asked.

'No, never before,' she replied.

'And now you will always see them,' he said.

'Now I shall always see them,' she repeated. 'Thank you so much for
showing me. I think they're so beautiful--little red flames--'

Her absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin and Ursula
were suspended. The little red pistillate flowers had some strange,
almost mystic-passionate attraction for her.

The lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last the class was
dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, with her chin in her
hand, her elbow on the table, her long white face pushed up, not
attending to anything. Birkin had gone to the window, and was looking
from the brilliantly-lighted room on to the grey, colourless outside,
where rain was noiselessly falling. Ursula put away her things in the
cupboard.

At length Hermione rose and came near to her.

'Your sister has come home?' she said.

'Yes,' said Ursula.

'And does she like being back in Beldover?'

'No,' said Ursula.

'No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the
ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won't you come and see me?
Won't you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few
days?--do--'

'Thank you very much,' said Ursula.

'Then I will write to you,' said Hermione. 'You think your sister will
come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of
her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in
wood, and painted--perhaps you have seen it?'

'No,' said Ursula.

'I think it is perfectly wonderful--like a flash of instinct.'

'Her little carvings ARE strange,' said Ursula.

'Perfectly beautiful--full of primitive passion--'

'Isn't it queer that she always likes little things?--she must always
work small things, that one can put between one's hands, birds and tiny
animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses,
and see the world that way--why is it, do you think?'

Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached scrutinising
gaze that excited the younger woman.

'Yes,' said Hermione at length. 'It is curious. The little things seem
to be more subtle to her--'

'But they aren't, are they? A mouse isn't any more subtle than a lion,
is it?'

Again Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long scrutiny, as if she
were following some train of thought of her own, and barely attending
to the other's sp