She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless.

The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey. Mrs Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, sly, honied, with something shrewish and cat-like beneath, asked the girls into her toocosy, too tidy kitchen. There was a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere.

‘Yes, Miss Brangwen,’ she said, in her slightly whining, insinuating voice, ‘and how do you like being back in the old place, then?’

Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.

‘I don’t care for it,’ she replied abruptly.

‘You don’t?