She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market.

‘But what are we going to do?’ she said. ‘We must live somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. I want a sort of natural GRANDEUR even, SPLENDOUR.’

‘You’ll never get it in houses and furniture—or even clothes. Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michelangelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside.’

She stood in the street contemplating.

‘And we are never to have a complete place of our own—never a home?’ she said.

‘Pray God, in this world, no,’ he answered.

‘But there’s only this world,’ she objected.

He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference.

‘Meanwhile, then, we’ll avoid having things of our own,’ he said.

‘But you’ve just bought a chair,’ she said.

‘I can tell the man I don’t want it,’ he replied.

She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched her face.

‘No,’ she said, ‘we don’t want it. I’m sick of old things.’

‘New ones as well,’ he said.

They retraced their steps.

There—in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow–faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell sideways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely aloof, like one of the damned.

‘Let us give it to THEM,’ whispered Ursula. ‘Look they are getting a home together.’

‘I won’t aid abet them in it,’ he said petulantly, instantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the active, procreant female.

‘Oh yes,’ cried Ursula. ‘It’s right for them—there’s nothing else for them.’

‘Very well,’ said Birkin, ‘you offer it to them. I’ll watch.’

Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were discussing an iron washstand—or rather, the man was glancing furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the abominable article, whilst the woman was arguing.

‘We bought a chair,’ said Ursula, ‘and we don’t want it. Would you have it? We should be glad if you would.’

The young couple looked round at her, not believing that she could be addressing them.