fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A queer little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp constraint.

‘Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?’ he asked himself. And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had done it ‘accidentally on purpose.’ He looked round at the hired footman. And the hired footman came, with a silent step of cold servant-like disapprobation. Birkin decided that he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a speech. But he was somehow disgusted.

At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or park. The view was pleasant;