Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy sing-song:

‘Isn’t the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with such a great sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.’

Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to the last impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hateful arrogance. She went with Hermione along the bank of the pond, talking of beautiful, soothing things, picking the gentle cowslips.

‘Wouldn’t you like a dress,’ said Ursula to Hermione, ‘of this yellow spotted with orange — a cotton dress?’

‘Yes,’ said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, letting the thought come home to her and soothe her.