‘Shall we be going?’ said Hermione. ‘Rupert, you are coming to Shortlands to dinner? Will you come at once, will you come now, with us?’

‘I’m not dressed,’ replied Birkin. ‘And you know Gerald stickles for convention.’

‘I don’t stickle for it,’ said Gerald. ‘But if you’d got as sick as I have of rowdy go–as–you–please in the house, you’d prefer it if people were peaceful and conventional, at least at meals.’

‘All right,’ said Birkin.

‘But can’t we wait for you while you dress?’ persisted Hermione.

‘If you like.’

He rose to go indoors. Ursula said she would take her leave.

‘Only,’ she said, turning to Gerald, ‘I must say that, however man is lord of the beast and the fowl, I still don’t think he has any right to violate the feelings of the inferior creation. I still think it would have been much more sensible and nice of you if you’d trotted back up the road while the train went by, and been considerate.’

‘I see,’ said Gerald, smiling, but somewhat annoyed. ‘I must remember another time.’

‘They all think I’m an interfering female,’ thought Ursula to herself, as she went away. But she was in arms against them.

She ran home plunged in thought. She had been very much moved by Hermione, she had really come into contact with her, so that there was a sort of league between the two women. And yet she could not bear her. But she put the thought away. ‘She’s really good,’ she said to herself. ‘She really wants what is right.’ And she tried to feel at one with Hermione, and to shut off from Birkin. She was strictly hostile to him. But she was held to him by some bond, some deep principle. This at once irritated her and saved her.

Only now and again, violent little shudders would come over her, out of her subconsciousness, and she knew it was the fact that she had stated her challenge to Birkin, and he had, consciously or unconsciously, accepted. It was a fight to the death between them—or to new life: though in what the conflict lay, no one could say.

The days went by, and she received no sign. Was he going to ignore her, was he going to take no further notice of her secret? A dreary weight of anxiety and acrid bitterness settled on her. And yet Ursula knew she was only deceiving herself, and that he would proceed. She said no word to anybody.

Then, sure enough, there came a note from him, asking if she would come to tea with Gudrun, to his rooms in town.

‘Why does he ask Gudrun as well?’ she asked herself at once. ‘Does he want to protect himself, or does he think I would not go alone?’ She was tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect himself. But at the end of all, she only said to herself:

‘I don’t want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to say something more to me. So I shan’t tell Gudrun anything about it, and I shall go alone. Then I shall know.’