new pleasure, feeling gay in his heart, irresponsible.

‘You are doing catkins?’ he asked, picking up a piece of hazel from a scholar’s desk in front of him. ‘Are they as far out as this? I hadn’t noticed them this year.’

He looked absorbedly at the tassel of hazel in his hand.

‘The red ones too!’ he said, looking at the flickers of crimson that came from the female bud.

Then he went in among the desks, to see the scholars’ books. Ursula watched his intent progress. There was a stillness in his motion that hushed the activities of her heart. She seemed to be standing aside in arrested silence, watching him move in another, concentrated world. His presence was so