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“Hello!” he exclaimed in surprise, seeing her standing there with the valise in her hand, and marks of tears on her face. She was one who wept without showing many traces, like a child.

“Do I look a sight?” she said, shrinking.

“No—why? Come in,” he took the bag from her hand and they went into the study.

There—immediately, her lips began to tremble like those of a child that remembers again, and the tears came rushing up.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, taking her in his arms. She sobbed violently on his shoulder, whilst he held her still, waiting.

“What’s the matter?” he said again, when she was quieter. But she only pressed her face further into his shoulder, in pain, like a child that cannot tell.

“What is it, then?” he asked.

Suddenly she broke away, wiped her eyes, regained her composure, and went and sat in a chair.

“Father hit me,” she announced, sitting bunched up, rather like a ruffled bird, her eyes very bright.

“What for?” he said.

She looked away, and would not answer. There was a pitiful redness about her sensitive nostrils, and her quivering lips.

“Why?” he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice.

She looked round at him, rather defiantly.

“Because I said I was going to be married to-morrow, and he bullied me.”

“Why did he bully you?”

Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears came up.

“Because I said he didn’t care—and he doesn’t, it’s only his domineeringness that’s hurt—” she said, her mouth pulled awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost smiled, it seemed so childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal conflict, a deep wound.

“It isn’t quite true,” he said. “And even so, you shouldn’t say it.”

“It is true—it is true,” she wept, “and I won’t be bullied by his pretending it’s love—when it isn‘t—he doesn’t care, how can he—no, he can’t—”

He sat in silence. She moved him beyond himself.

“Then you shouldn’t rouse him, if he can’t,” replied Birkin quietly.

“And I have loved him, I have,” she wept. “I’ve loved him always, and he’s always done this to me, he has—”

“It’s been a love of opposition, then,” he said. “Never mind—it will be all right. It’s nothing desperate.”

“Yes,” she wept, “it is, it is.”

“Why?”

“I shall never see him again—”

“Not immediately. Don’t cry, you had to break with him, it had to be—don’t cry.”

He went over to her and kissed her fine, fragile hair, touching her wet cheeks gently.

“Don’t cry,” he repeated, “don’t cry any more.”

He held her head close against him, very close and quiet.

At last she was still. Then she looked up, her eyes wide and frightened.

“Don’t you want me?” she asked.

“Want you?” His darkened, steady eyes puzzled her and did not give her play.

“Do you wish I hadn’t come?” she asked, anxious now again for fear she might be out of place.

“No,” he said. “I wish there hadn’t been the violence—so much ugliness—but perhaps it was inevitable.”

She watched him in silence. He seemed deadened.

“But where shall I stay?” she asked, feeling humiliated.

He thought for a moment.

“Here, with me,” he said. “We’re married as much to-day as we shall be to-morrow.”

“But—”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Varley,” he said. “Never mind now.”

He sat looking at her. She could feel his darkened steady eyes looking at her all the time. It made her a little bit frightened. She pushed her hair off her forehead nervously.

“Do I look ugly?” she said.

And she blew her nose again.

A small smile came round his eyes.

“No,” he said, “fortunately.”

And he went across to her, and gathered her like a belonging in his arms. She was so tenderly beautiful, he could not bear to see her, he could only bear to hide her against himself.

Now, washed all clean by her tears, she was new and frail like a flower just unfolded, a flower so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, he must hide her against himself, cover his eyes against her. She had the perfect candour of creation, something translucent and simple, like a radiant, shining flower that moment unfolded