silk underclothing, and silk braces. Curious! This was another of the differences between them. Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own appearance.

‘Of course you,’ said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; ‘there’s something curious about you. You’re curiously strong. One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.’

Birkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of the other man, blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was half thinking of the difference between it and himself — so different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from woman, yet in another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman who was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this moment. Gerald was becoming dim again, lapsing out of him.