radiance. He might have been saying anything whatsoever. She seemed pleased.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I wanted to — I wanted you to agree to marry me.’

She looked at him. His eyes were flickering with mixed lights, wanting something of her, yet not wanting it. She shrank a little, as if she were exposed to his eyes, and as if it were a pain to her. She darkened, her soul clouded over, she turned aside. She had been driven out of her own radiant, single world. And she dreaded contact, it was almost unnatural to her at these times.

‘Yes,’ she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice.

Birkin’s heart contracted swiftly, in a sudden fire of bitterness. It all meant nothing to her.