Birkin was silent, thinking how scrupulous Gerald was in his attire, how expensive too. He wore silk socks, and studs of fine workmanship, and silk underclothing, and silk braces. Curious! This was another of the differences between them. Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own appearance.
“Of course you,” said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; “there’s something curious about you. You’re curiously strong. One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.”
Birkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of the other man, blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was half thinking of the difference between it and himself—so different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from woman, yet in another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman who was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this moment. Gerald was becoming dim again, lapsing out of him.
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “I went and proposed to Ursula Brangwen tonight, that she should marry me.”
He saw the blank shining wonder come over Gerald’s face.
“You did?”
“Yes. Almost formally—speaking first to her father, as it should be, in the world—though that was accident—or mischief.”
Gerald only stared in wonder, as if he did not grasp.
“You don’t mean to say that you seriously went and asked her father to let you marry her?”
“Yes,” said Birkin, “I did.”