Then there came the voices of the two children calling shyly outside the door, softly, with self–excited timidity:

‘Ursula! Ursula!’

She rose and opened the door. On the threshold stood the two children in their long nightgowns, with wide–eyed, angelic faces. They were being very good for the moment, playing the role perfectly of two obedient children.

‘Shall you take us to bed!’ said Billy, in a loud whisper.

‘Why you ARE angels tonight,’ she said softly. ‘Won’t you come and say good–night to Mr Birkin?’

The children merged shyly into the room, on bare feet. Billy’s face was wide and grinning, but there was a great solemnity of being good in his round blue eyes. Dora, peeping from the floss of her fair hair, hung back like some tiny Dryad, that has no soul.

‘Will you say good–night to me?’ asked Birkin, in a voice that was strangely soft and smooth. Dora drifted away at once, like a leaf lifted on a breath of wind. But Billy went softly forward, slow and willing, lifting his pinched–up mouth implicitly to be kissed. Ursula watched the full, gathered lips of the man gently touch those of the boy, so gently. Then Birkin lifted his fingers and touched the boy’s round, confiding cheek, with a faint touch of love. Neither spoke. Billy seemed angelic like a cherub boy, or like an acolyte, Birkin was a tall, grave angel looking down to him.

‘Are you going to be kissed?’ Ursula broke in, speaking to the little girl. But Dora edged away like a tiny Dryad that will not be touched.

‘Won’t you say good–night to Mr Birkin? Go, he’s waiting for you,’ said Ursula. But the girl–child only made a little motion away from him.

‘Silly Dora, silly Dora!’ said Ursula.

Birkin felt some mistrust and antagonism in the small child. He could not understand it.

‘Come then,’ said Ursula. ‘Let us go before mother comes.’

‘Who’ll hear us say our prayers?’ asked Billy anxiously.

‘Whom you like.’

‘Won’t you?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Ursula?’

‘Well Billy?’

‘Is it WHOM you like?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well what is WHOM?’

‘It’s the accusative of who.’

There was a moment’s contemplative silence, then the confiding:

‘Is it?’

Birkin smiled to himself as he sat by the fire. When Ursula came down he sat motionless, with his arms on his knees. She saw him, how he was motionless and ageless, like some crouching idol, some image of a deathly religion. He looked round at her, and his face, very pale and unreal, seemed to gleam with a whiteness almost phosphorescent.

‘Don’t you feel well?’ she asked, in indefinable repulsion.

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘But don’t you know without thinking about it?’