te. Out of the intense silence, the mother's voice
was heard saying, cold and angry:

'Well, you shouldn't take so much notice of her.'

Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of emotions and
thoughts.

Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and furs, with a
small valise in her hand:

'Good-bye!' she said, in her maddening, bright, almost mocking tone.
'I'm going.'

And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard the outer door,
then her quick steps down the garden path, then the gate banged, and
her light footfall was gone. There was a silence like death in the
house.

Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly on winged
feet. There was no train, she must walk on to the junction. As she went
through the darkness, she began to cry, and she wept bitterly, with a
dumb, heart-broken, child's anguish, all the way on the road, and in
the train. Time passed unheeded and unknown, she did not know where she
was, nor what was taking place. Only she wept from fathomless depths of
hopeless, hopeless grief, the terrible grief of a child, that knows no
extenuation.

Yet her voice had the same defensive brightness as she spoke to
Birkin's landlady at the door.

'Good evening! Is Mr Birkin in? Can I see him?'

'Yes, he's in. He's in his study.'

Ursula slipped past the woman. His door opened. He had heard her voice.

'Hello!' he exclaimed in surprise, seeing her standing there with the
valise in her hand, and marks of tears on her face. She was one who
wept without showing many traces, like a child.

'Do I look a sight?' she said, shrinking.

'No--why? Come in,' he took the bag from her hand and they went into
the study.

There--immediately, her lips began to tremble like those of a child
that remembers again, and the tears came rushing up.

'What's the matter?' he asked, taking her in his arms. She sobbed
violently on his shoulder, whilst he held her still, waiting.

'What's the matter?' he said again, when she was quieter. But she only
pressed her face further into his shoulder, in pain, like a child that
cannot tell.

'What is it, then?' he asked. Suddenly she broke away, wiped her eyes,
regained her composure, and went and sat in a chair.

'Father hit me,' she announced, sitting bunched up, rather like a
ruffled bird, her eyes very bright.

'What for?' he said.

She looked away, and would not answer. There was a pitiful redness
about her sensitive nos