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Ursula had apprehended him with a fine frisson of attraction. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again Ursula forgot him.

“Won’t you have the chair?” she said.

The man looked at her with a sideways look of appreciation, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself up. There was a certain coster-monger richness about her. She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula so nonplussed and frightened.

“What’s the matter?” he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious, amiable, jeering warmth:

“What she warnt?—eh?” An odd smile writhed his lips.

Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.

“To give you a chair—that—with the label on it,” he said pointing.

The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious freemasonry in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.

“What’s she warnt to give it us for, guvnor,” he replied, in a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula.

“Thought you’d like it—its a pretty chair. We bought it and don’t want it. No need for you to have it, don’t be frightened,” said Birkin, with a wry smile.

The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising.

“Why don’t you want it for yourselves, if you’ve just bought it?” asked the woman coolly. “ ’Tain’t good enough for you, now you’ve had a look at it. Frightened it’s got something in it, I’ll bet.”

She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resentment.

“I’d never thought of that,” said Birkin. “But no, the wood’s too thin everywhere.”

“You see,” said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. “We are just going to get married, and we thought we’d buy things. Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn’t have furniture, we’d go abroad.”

The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was impassive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter-presence.

“It’s all right to be some folks,” said the city girl, turning to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with darkness.

“Cawsts something to chynge your mind,” he said, in an incredibly low accent.

“Only ten shillings this time,” said Birkin.

The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, unsure.

“Cheap at ’arf a quid,cl guvnor,” he said. “Not like getting divawced.”

“We’re not married yet,” said Birkin.

“No, no more aren’t we,” said the young woman loudly. “But we shall be, a Saturday.”

Again she looked at the young man with a determined, protective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, and Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and slinking singleness.

“Good luck to you,” said Birkin.

“Same to you,” said the young woman. Then, rather tentatively: “When’s yours coming off, then?”

Birkin looked round at Ursula.

“It’s for the lady to say,” he replied. “We go to the registrar the moment she’s ready.”

Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment.

“No ’urry,” said the young man, grinning suggestive.

“Oh, don’t break your neck to get there,” said the young woman. “ ’Slike when you’re dead—you’re a long time married.”

The young man turned aside as if this hit him.

“The longer the better, let us hope,” said Birkin.

“That’s it, guvnor,” said the young man admiringly. “Enjoy it while it lasts—niver whip a dead donkey.”

“Only when he’s shamming dead,” said the young woman, looking