He had toiled painfully down the ravine, and on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing some signs of water. Now the great salt plain stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant or tree, which might indicate the presence of moisture. In all that broad landscape there was no gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild, questioning eyes, and then he realized that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. “Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, twenty years hence?” he muttered, as he seated himself in the shelter of a boulder.

Before sitting down, he had deposited upon the ground his useless rifle, and also a large bundle tied up in a gray shawl, which he had carried slung over his right shoulder. It appeared to be somewhat too heavy for his strength, for in lowering it, it came down on the ground with some little violence. Instantly there broke from the gray parcel a little moaning cry, and from it there protruded protruded a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, and two little speckled dimpled fists.

“You’ve hurt me!” said a childish voice, reproachfully.

“Have I, though?” the man answered penitently; “I didn’t go for to do it.” As he spoke he unwrapped the gray shawl and extricated a pretty little girl of about five years of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock with its little linen apron, all bespoke a mother’s care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy arms and legs showed that she had suffered less than her companion.

“How is it now?” he answered anxiously, for she was still rubbing the tousy golden curls which covered the back of her head.

“Kiss it and make it well,” she said, with perfect gravity, showing the injured part up to him. “That’s what mother used to do. Where’s mother?”

“Mother’s gone. I guess you‘ll see her before long.”

“Gone, eh!” said the little girl. “Funny, she didn’t say good-bye; she most always did if she was just goin’ over to auntie’s for tea, and now she‘s been away three days. Say, it’s awful dry, ain’t it? Ain‘t there no water nor nothing to eat?”

“No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You‘ll just need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all right. Put your head up ag‘in me like that, and then you’ll feel bullier. It ain‘t easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let you know how the cards lie. What’s that you‘ve got?”

“Pretty things! fine things!” cried the little girl enthusiastically, holding up two glittering fragments of mica. “When we goes back to home I’ll give them to brother Bob.”

“You’ll see prettier things than them soon,” said the man confidently. “You just wait a bit. I was going to tell you though — you remember when we left the river?”

‘I haven’t any crayons,’ said Ursula.

‘There will be some somewhere—red and yellow, that’s all you want.’

Ursula sent out a boy on a quest.

‘It will make the books untidy,’ she said to Birkin, flushing deeply.

‘Not very,’ he said. ‘You must mark in these things obviously. It’s the fact you want to emphasise, not the subjective impression to record. What’s the fact?—red little spiky stigmas of the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yellow pollen flying from one to the other. Make a pictorial record of the fact, as a child does when drawing a face—two eyes, one nose, mouth with teeth—so—’ And he drew a figure on the blackboard.

At that moment another vision was seen through the glass panels of the door. It was Hermione Roddice. Birkin went and opened to her.

‘I saw your car,’ she said to him. ‘Do you mind my coming to find you? I wanted to see you when you were on duty.’

She looked at him for a long time, intimate and playful, then she gave a short little laugh. And then only she turned to Ursula, who, with all the class, had been watching the little scene between the lovers.

‘How do you do, Miss Brangwen,’ sang Hermione, in her low, odd, singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were poking fun. ‘Do you mind my coming in?’

Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ursula, as if summing her up.

‘Oh no,’ said Ursula.

‘Are you SURE?’ repeated Hermione, with complete sang froid, and an odd, half–bullying effrontery.

‘Oh no, I like it awfully,’ laughed Ursula, a little bit excited and bewildered, because Hermione seemed to be compelling her, coming very close to her, as if intimate with her; and yet, how could she be intimate?

This was the answer Hermione wanted. She turned satisfied to Birkin.

‘What are you doing?’ she sang, in her casual, inquisitive fashion.

‘Catkins,’ he replied.

‘Really!’ she said. ‘And what do you learn about them?’ She spoke all the while in a mocking, half teasing fashion, as if making game of the whole business. She picked up a twig of the catkin, piqued by Birkin’s attention to it.

She was a strange figure in the class–room, wearing a large, old cloak of greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of dull gold. The high collar, and the inside of the cloak, was lined with dark fur. Beneath she had a dress of fine lavender–coloured cloth, trimmed with fur, and her hat was close–fitting, made of fur and of the dull, green–and–gold figured stuff. She was tall and strange, she looked as if she had come out of some new, bizarre picture.

‘Do you know the little red ovary flowers, that produce the nuts? Have you ever noticed them?’ he asked her. And he came close and pointed them out to her, on the sprig she held.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘What are they?’