‘No,’ said Birkin.

‘No? I didn’t know anything of this sort was on foot—’ Brangwen smiled awkwardly.

Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: ‘I wonder why it should be “on foot”!’ Aloud he said:

‘No, it’s perhaps rather sudden.’ At which, thinking of his relationship with Ursula, he added—‘but I don’t know—’

‘Quite sudden, is it? Oh!’ said Brangwen, rather baffled and annoyed.

‘In one way,’ replied Birkin, ‘—not in another.’

There was a moment’s pause, after which Brangwen said:

‘Well, she pleases herself—’

‘Oh yes!’ said Birkin, calmly.

A vibration came into Brangwen’s strong voice, as he replied:

‘Though I shouldn’t want her to be in too big a hurry, either. It’s no good looking round afterwards, when it’s too late.’

‘Oh, it need never be too late,’ said Birkin, ‘as far as that goes.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked the father.

‘If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,’ said Birkin.

‘You think so?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ay, well that may be your way of looking at it.’

Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: ‘So it may. As for YOUR way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.’

‘I suppose,’ said Brangwen, ‘you know what sort of people we are? What sort of a bringing–up she’s had?’

‘“She”,’ thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood’s corrections, ‘is the cat’s mother.’

‘Do I know what sort of a bringing–up she’s had?’ he said aloud.

He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘she’s had everything that’s right for a girl to have—as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.’

‘I’m sure she has,’ said Birkin, which caused a perilous full–stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally irritant to him in Birkin’s mere presence.

‘And I don’t want to see her going back on it all,’ he said, in a clanging voice.

‘Why?’ said Birkin.

This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen’s brain like a shot.

‘Why! I don’t believe in your new–fangled ways and new–fangled ideas—in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would never do for me.’

Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagnoism in the two men was rousing.

‘Yes, but are my ways and ideas new–fangled?’ asked Birkin.

‘Are they?’ Brangwen caught himself up. ‘I’m not speaking of you in particular,’ he said. ‘What I mean is that my children have been brought up to think and do according to the religion I was brought up in myself, and I don’t want to see them going away from THAT.’