ard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling
wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened.

'What's the matter?' he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped
slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that
was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a
little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable,
jeering warmth:

'What she warnt?--eh?' An odd smile writhed his lips.

Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.

'To give you a chair--that--with the label on it,' he said, pointing.

The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility
in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.

'What's she warnt to give it US for, guvnor,' he replied, in a tone of
free intimacy that insulted Ursula.

'Thought you'd like it--it's a pretty chair. We bought it and don't
want it. No need for you to have it, don't be frightened,' said Birkin,
with a wry smile.

The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising.

'Why don't you want it for yourselves, if you've just bought it?' asked
the woman coolly. ''Taint good enough for you, now you've had a look at
it. Frightened it's got something in it, eh?'

She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment.

'I'd never thought of that,' said Birkin. 'But no, the wood's too thin
everywhere.'

'You see,' said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. 'WE are just
going to get married, and we thought we'd buy things. Then we decided,
just now, that we wouldn't have furniture, we'd go abroad.'

The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of
the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The
youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line
of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide,
closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive
presence, a gutter-presence.

'It's all right to be some folks,' said the city girl, turning to her
own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower
part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent.
His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness.

'Cawsts something to change your mind,' he said, in an incredibly low
accent.

'Only ten shillings this time,' said Birkin.

The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure.

'Cheap at 'arf a quid, guvnor,' he