`You can only have knowledge, strictly,' he replied, `of things concluded, in the past. It's like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.'

`Can one have knowledge only of the past?' asked the Baronet, pointedly. `Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?'

`Yes,' said Birkin.

`There is a most beautiful thing in my book,' suddenly piped the little Italian woman. `It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.'

There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa.

`See!' said the Contessa.

`Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the street,' she read.

Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet's, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.

`What is the book?' asked Alexander, promptly.

`Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,' said the little foreigner, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself.

`An old American edition,' said Birkin.

`Ha! -- of course -- translated from the French,' said Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. `Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans la rue.'

He looked brightly round the company.

`I wonder what the "hurriedly" was,' said Ursula.

They all began to guess.

And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came hurrying with a large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so swiftly.

After tea, they were all gathered for a walk.

`Would you like to come for a walk?' said Hermione to each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling somehow like prisoners marshalled for exercise. Birkin only refused.

`Will you come for a walk, Rupert?'

`No, Hermione.'

`But are you sure?'

`Quite sure.' There was a second's hesitation.

`And why not?' sang Hermione's question. It made her blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. She intended them all to walk with her in the park.

`Because I don't like trooping off in a gang,' he said.