use me if I can
be of any help at all--but how can I? I don't see how I CAN help you.'

He looked down at her critically.

'I don't want you to HELP,' he said, slightly irritated, 'because
there's nothing to be DONE. I only want sympathy, do you see: I want
somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And
there IS nobody to talk to sympathetically. That's the curious thing.
There IS nobody. There's Rupert Birkin. But then he ISN'T sympathetic,
he wants to DICTATE. And that is no use whatsoever.'

She was caught in a strange snare. She looked down at her hands.

Then there was the sound of the door softly opening. Gerald started. He
was chagrined. It was his starting that really startled Gudrun. Then he
went forward, with quick, graceful, intentional courtesy.

'Oh, mother!' he said. 'How nice of you to come down. How are you?'

The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple gown, came
forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual. Her son was at her side.
He pushed her up a chair, saying 'You know Miss Brangwen, don't you?'

The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently.

'Yes,' she said. Then she turned her wonderful, forget-me-not blue eyes
up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the chair he had brought her.

'I came to ask you about your father,' she said, in her rapid,
scarcely-audible voice. 'I didn't know you had company.'

'No? Didn't Winifred tell you? Miss Brangwen stayed to dinner, to make
us a little more lively--'

Mrs Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at her, but with
unseeing eyes.

'I'm afraid it would be no treat to her.' Then she turned again to her
son. 'Winifred tells me the doctor had something to say about your
father. What is it?'

'Only that the pulse is very weak--misses altogether a good many
times--so that he might not last the night out,' Gerald replied.

Mrs Crich sat perfectly impassive, as if she had not heard. Her bulk
seemed hunched in the chair, her fair hair hung slack over her ears.
But her skin was clear and fine, her hands, as she sat with them
forgotten and folded, were quite beautiful, full of potential energy. A
great mass of energy seemed decaying up in that silent, hulking form.

She looked up at her son, as he stood, keen and soldierly, near to her.
Her eyes were most wonderfully blue, bluer than forget-me-nots. She
seemed to have a certain confidence in Gerald, and to feel a certain
motherly mistrust of him.

'How are