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“Aw, there’s a difference,” he said satirically.

“What about the chair?” said Birkin.

“Yes, all right,” said the woman.

They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject young fellow hanging a little aside.

“That’s it,” said Birkin. “Will you take it with you, or have the address altered?”

“Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the dear old ’ome.”

“Mike use of ’im,” said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking.

“ ’Ere’s mother’s cosy chair,” he said. “Warnts a cushion.” And he stood it down on the market stones.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” laughed Ursula.

“Oh, I do,” said the young woman.

“ ’Ave a sit in it, you’ll wish you’d kept it,” said the young man.

Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place.

“Awfully comfortable,” she said. “But rather hard. You try it.” She invited the young man to a seat. But he turned uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat.

“Don’t spoil him,” said the young woman. “He’s not used to armchairs, ’e isn’t.”

The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin:

“Only warnts legs on ’is.”

The four parted. The young woman thanked them.

“Thank you for the chair—it’ll last till it gives way.”

“Keep it for an ornyment,” said the young man.

“Good afternoon—good afternoon,” said Ursula and Birkin.

“Goo’-luck to you,” said the young man, glancing and avoiding Birkin’s eyes, as he turned aside his head.

The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin’s arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-consciousness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was somewhere indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too.

“How strange they are!” said Ursula.

“Children of men,” he said. “They remind me of Jesus: ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ ”

“But they aren’t the meek,” said Ursula.

“Yes, I don’t know why, but they are,” he replied.

They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of crowded houses.

“And are they going to inherit the earth?” she said.

“Yes—they.”

“Then what are we going to do?” she asked. “We’re not like them—are we? We’re not the meek?”

“No. We’ve got to live in the chinks they leave us.”

“How horrible!” cried Ursula. “I don’t want to live in chinks.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They are the children of men, they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves plenty of chinks.”

“All the world,” she said.

“Ah no—but some room.”

The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the distance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, somehow small, crowded, and like the end of the world.

“I don’t mind it even then,” said Ursula, looking at the repulsiveness of it all. “It doesn’t concern me.”

“No more it does,” he replied, holding her hand. “One needn’t see. One goes one’s way. In my world it is sunny and spacious—”

“It is, my love, isn’t it?” she cried, hugging near to him on the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared at them.

“And we will wander about on the face of the earth,” he said, “and we’ll look at the world beyond just this bit.”

There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as she sat thinking.

“I don’t want to inherit the earth,” she said. “I don’t want to inherit anything.”

He closed his hand over hers.

“Neither do I. I want to be disinherited.”

She clasped his fingers closely.

“We won’t care about anything,” she