trils, and her quivering lips.

'Why?' he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice.

She looked round at him, rather defiantly.

'Because I said I was going to be married tomorrow, and he bullied me.'

'Why did he bully you?'

Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears
came up.

'Because I said he didn't care--and he doesn't, it's only his
domineeringness that's hurt--' she said, her mouth pulled awry by her
weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost smiled, it seemed so
childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal conflict, a deep
wound.

'It isn't quite true,' he said. 'And even so, you shouldn't SAY it.'

'It IS true--it IS true,' she wept, 'and I won't be bullied by his
pretending it's love--when it ISN'T--he doesn't care, how can he--no,
he can't-'

He sat in silence. She moved him beyond himself.

'Then you shouldn't rouse him, if he can't,' replied Birkin quietly.

'And I HAVE loved him, I have,' she wept. 'I've loved him always, and
he's always done this to me, he has--'

'It's been a love of opposition, then,' he said. 'Never mind--it will
be all right. It's nothing desperate.'

'Yes,' she wept, 'it is, it is.'

'Why?'

'I shall never see him again--'

'Not immediately. Don't cry, you had to break with him, it had to
be--don't cry.'

He went over to her and kissed her fine, fragile hair, touching her wet
cheeks gently.

'Don't cry,' he repeated, 'don't cry any more.'

He held her head close against him, very close and quiet.

At last she was still. Then she looked up, her eyes wide and frightened.

'Don't you want me?' she asked.

'Want you?' His darkened, steady eyes puzzled her and did not give her
play.

'Do you wish I hadn't come?' she asked, anxious now again for fear she
might be out of place.

'No,' he said. 'I wish there hadn't been the violence--so much
ugliness--but perhaps it was inevitable.'

She watched him in silence. He seemed deadened.

'But where shall I stay?' she asked, feeling humiliated.

He thought for a moment.

'Here, with me,' he said. 'We're married as much today as we shall be
tomorrow.'

'But--'

'I'll tell Mrs Varley,' he said. 'Never mind now.'

He sat looking at her. She could feel his darkened steady eyes looking
at her all the time. It made her a little bit frightened. She pushed
her hair off her forehead nervously.

'Do I look ugly?' she said.

And she blew her nose again.

A smal