goes--go and make him
give it up.'

Gudrun stood at the door of the taxi, which the man held open for her.

'To the hotel?' she asked, as Gerald came out, hurriedly.

'Where you like,' he answered.

'Right!' she said. Then to the driver, 'Wagstaff's--Barton Street.'

The driver bowed his head, and put down the flag.

Gudrun entered the taxi, with the deliberate cold movement of a woman
who is well-dressed and contemptuous in her soul. Yet she was frozen
with overwrought feelings. Gerald followed her.

'You've forgotten the man,' she said cooly, with a slight nod of her
hat. Gerald gave the porter a shilling. The man saluted. They were in
motion.

'What was all the row about?' asked Gerald, in wondering excitement.

'I walked away with Birkin's letter,' she said, and he saw the crushed
paper in her hand.

His eyes glittered with satisfaction.

'Ah!' he said. 'Splendid! A set of jackasses!'

'I could have KILLED them!' she cried in passion. 'DOGS!--they are
dogs! Why is Rupert such a FOOL as to write such letters to them? Why
does he give himself away to such canaille? It's a thing that CANNOT BE
BORNE.'

Gerald wondered over her strange passion.

And she could not rest any longer in London. They must go by the
morning train from Charing Cross. As they drew over the bridge, in the
train, having glimpses of the river between the great iron girders, she
cried:

'I feel I could NEVER see this foul town again--I couldn't BEAR to come
back to it.'

CHAPTER XXIX.

CONTINENTAL

Ursula went on in an unreal suspense, the last weeks before going away.
She was not herself,--she was not anything. She was something that is
going to be--soon--soon--very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent.

She went to see her parents. It was a rather stiff, sad meeting, more
like a verification of separateness than a reunion. But they were all
vague and indefinite with one another, stiffened in the fate that moved
them apart.

She did not really come to until she was on the ship crossing from
Dover to Ostend. Dimly she had come down to London with Birkin, London
had been a vagueness, so had the train-journey to Dover. It was all
like a sleep.

And now, at last, as she stood in the stern of the ship, in a
pitch-dark, rather blowy night, feeling the motion of the sea, and
watching the small, rather desolate little lights that twinkled on the
shores of England, as on the shores of nowhere, watched them sinking
sm