`From those little red bits, the nuts come; if they receive pollen from the long danglers.'

`Little red flames, little red flames,' murmured Hermione to herself. And she remained for some moments looking only at the small buds out of which the red flickers of the stigma issued.

`Aren't they beautiful? I think they're so beautiful,' she said, moving close to Birkin, and pointing to the red filaments with her long, white finger.

`Had you never noticed them before?' he asked.

`No, never before,' she replied.

`And now you will always see them,' he said.

`Now I shall always see them,' she repeated. `Thank you so much for showing me. I think they're so beautiful -- little red flames --'

Her absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin and Ursula were suspended. The little red pistillate flowers had some strange, almost mystic-passionate attraction for her.

The lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last the class was dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, with her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table, her long white face pushed up, not attending to anything. Birkin had gone to the window, and was looking from the brilliantly-lighted room on to the grey, colourless outside, where rain was noiselessly falling. Ursula put away her things in the cupboard.

At length Hermione rose and came near to her.

`Your sister has come home?' she said.

`Yes,' said Ursula.

`And does she like being back in Beldover?'

`No,' said Ursula.

`No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength, to bear the ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won't you come and see me? Won't you come with your sister to stay at Breadalby for a few days? -- do --'

`Thank you very much,' said Ursula.

`Then I will write to you,' said Hermione. `You think your sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is wonderful. I think some of her work is really wonderful. I have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and painted -- perhaps you have seen it?'

`No,' said Ursula.

`I think it is perfectly wonderful -- like a flash of instinct.'

`Her little carvings are strange,' said Ursula.

`Perfectly beautiful -- full of primitive passion --'

`Isn't it queer that she always likes little things? -- she must always work small things, that one can put between one's hands, birds and tiny animals. She likes to look through the wrong end of the opera glasses, and see the world that way -- why is it, do you think?'