There was a dangerous pause.

‘And beyond that—?’ asked Birkin.

The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position.

‘Eh? What do you mean? All I want to say is that my daughter’—he tailed off into silence, overcome by futility. He knew that in some way he was off the track.

‘Of course,’ said Birkin, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.’

There was a complete silence, because of the utter failure in mutual understanding. Birkin felt bored. Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes. The eyes of the younger man rested on the face of the elder. Brangwen looked up, and saw Birkin looking at him. His face was covered with inarticulate anger and humiliation and sense of inferiority in strength.

‘And as for beliefs, that’s one thing,’ he said. ‘But I’d rather see my daughters dead tomorrow than that they should be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and whistle for them.’

A queer painful light came into Birkin’s eyes.

‘As to that,’ he said, ‘I only know that it’s much more likely that it’s I who am at the beck and call of the woman, than she at mine.’

Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat bewildered.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘she’ll please herself—she always has done. I’ve done my best for them, but that doesn’t matter. They’ve got themselves to please, and if they can help it they’ll please nobody BUT themselves. But she’s a right to consider her mother, and me as well—’

Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts.

‘And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than see them getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see everywhere nowadays. I’d rather bury them—’

‘Yes but, you see,’ said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored again by this new turn, ‘they won’t give either you or me the chance to bury them, because they’re not to be buried.’

Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger.

‘Now, Mr Birkin,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve come here for, and I don’t know what you’re asking for. But my daughters are my daughters—and it’s my business to look after them while I can.’

Birkin’s brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery. But he remained perfectly stiff and still. There was a pause.

‘I’ve nothing against your marrying Ursula,’ Brangwen began at length. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me, she’ll do as she likes, me or no me.’

Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting go his consciousness. After all, what good was this? It was hopeless to keep it up. He would sit on till Ursula came home, then speak to her, then go away. He would not accept trouble at the hands of her father. It was all unnecessary, and he himself need not have provoked it.