`Why don't you stay in bed when you are seedy? You look perfectly ghastly.'

`Offensively so?' he asked ironically.

`Yes, quite offensive. Quite repelling.'

`Ah!! Well that's unfortunate.'

`And it's raining, and it's a horrible night. Really, you shouldn't be forgiven for treating your body like it -- you ought to suffer, a man who takes as little notice of his body as that.'

`-- takes as little notice of his body as that,' he echoed mechanically.

This cut her short, and there was silence.

The others came in from church, and the two had the girls to face, then the mother and Gudrun, and then the father and the boy.

`Good-evening,' said Brangwen, faintly surprised. `Came to see me, did you?'

`No,' said Birkin, `not about anything, in particular, that is. The day was dismal, and I thought you wouldn't mind if I called in.'

`It has been a depressing day,' said Mrs Brangwen sympathetically. At that moment the voices of the children were heard calling from upstairs: `Mother! Mother!' She lifted her face and answered mildly into the distance: `I shall come up to you in a minute, Doysie.' Then to Birkin: `There is nothing fresh at Shortlands, I suppose? Ah,' she sighed, `no, poor things, I should think not.'

`You've been over there today, I suppose?' asked the father.

`Gerald came round to tea with me, and I walked back with him. The house is overexcited and unwholesome, I thought.'

`I should think they were people who hadn't much restraint,' said Gudrun.

`Or too much,' Birkin answered.

`Oh yes, I'm sure,' said Gudrun, almost vindictively, `one or the other.'

`They all feel they ought to behave in some unnatural fashion,' said Birkin. `When people are in grief, they would do better to cover their faces and keep in retirement, as in the old days.'

`Certainly!' cried Gudrun, flushed and inflammable. `What can be worse than this public grief -- what is more horrible, more false! If grief is not private, and hidden, what is?'

`Exactly,' he said. `I felt ashamed when I was there and they were all going about in a lugubrious false way, feeling they must not be natural or ordinary.'

`Well --' said Mrs Brangwen, offended at this criticism, `it isn't so easy to bear a trouble like that.'

And she went upstairs to the children.

He remained only a few minutes longer, then took his leave. When he was gone Ursula felt such a poignant hatred of him, that all her brain seemed turned into a sharp crystal of fine hatred. Her whole nature seemed sharpened and intensified into a pure dart of hate. She could not imagine what it was. It merely took hold of her, the most poignant and ultimate hatred, pure and clear and beyond thought. She could not think of it at all, she was translated beyond herself. It was like a possession. She felt she was possessed.