Ursula sent out a boy on a quest.
“It will make the books untidy,” she said to Birkin, flushing deeply.
“Not very,” he said. “You must mark in these things obviously. It’s the fact you want to emphasise, not the subjective impression to record. What’s the fact?—red little spiky stigmas of the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yellow pollen flying from one to the other. Make a pictorial record of the fact, as a child does when drawing a face—two eyes, one nose, mouth with teeth—so—” And he drew a figure on the blackboard.
At that moment another vision was seen through the glass panels of the door. It was Hermione Roddice. Birkin went and opened to her.
“I saw your car,” she said to him. “Do you mind my coming to find you? I wanted to see you when you were on duty.”
She looked at him for a long time, intimate and playful, then she gave a short little laugh. And then only she turned to Ursula, who, with all the class, had been watching the little scene between the lovers.
“How do you do, Miss Brangwen,” sang Hermione, in her low, odd, singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were poking fun. “Do you mind my coming in?”
Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ursula, as if summing her up.
“Oh no,” said Ursula.
“Are you sure?” repeated Hermione, with complete sang-froid, and an odd, half-bullying effrontery.