‘Of course,’ he said, with a startling change of conversation, ‘it is father who really feels it. It will finish him. For him the world collapses. All his care now is for Winnie — he must save Winnie. He says she ought to be sent away to school, but she won’t hear of it, and he’ll never do it. Of course she IS in rather a queer way. We’re all of us curiously bad at living. We can do things — but we can’t get on with life at all. It’s curious — a family failing.’

‘She oughtn’t to be sent away to school,’ said Birkin, who was considering a new proposition.

‘She oughtn’t. Why?’

‘She’s a queer child — a special child, more special