They sat on till Birkin came in and found them together. He felt at
once the antagonism in the atmosphere, something radical and
insuperable, and he bit his lip. But he affected a bluff manner.
'Hello, Hermione, are you back again? How do you feel?' 'Oh, better. And how are you--you don't look well--' 'Oh!--I believe Gudrun and Winnie Crich are coming in to tea. At least
they said they were. We shall be a tea-party. What train did you come
by, Ursula?' It was rather annoying to see him trying to placate both women at once.
Both women watched him, Hermione with deep resentment and pity for him,
Ursula very impatient. He was nervous and apparently in quite good
spirits, chattering the conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed
and indignant at the way he made small-talk; he was adept as any FAT in
Christendom. She became quite stiff, she would not answer. It all
seemed to her so false and so belittling. And still Gudrun did not
appear.
'I think I shall go to Florence for the winter,' said Hermione at
length.
'Will you?' he answered. 'But it is so cold there.' 'Yes, but I shall stay with Palestra. It is quite comfortable.' 'What takes you to Florence?' 'I don't know,' said Hermione slowly. Then she looked at him with her
slow, heavy gaze. 'Barnes is starting his school of aesthetics, and
Olandese is going to give a set of discourses on the Italian national
policy-' 'Both rubbish,' he said.
'No, I don't think so,' said Hermione.
'Which do you admire, then?' 'I admire both. Barnes is a pioneer. And then I am interested in Italy,
in her coming to national consciousness.' 'I wish she'd come to something different from national consciousness,
then,' said Birkin; 'especially as it only means a sort of
commercial-industrial consciousness. I hate Italy and her national
rant. And I think Barnes is an amateur.' Hermione was silent for some moments, in a state of hostility. But yet,
she had got Birkin back again into her world! How subtle her influence
was, she seemed to start his irritable attention into her direction
exclusively, in one minute. He was her creature.
'No,' she said, 'you are wrong.' Then a sort of tension came over her,
she raised her face like the pythoness inspired with oracles, and went
on, in rhapsodic manner: 'Il Sandro mi scrive che ha accolto il piu
grande entusiasmo, tutti i giovani, e fanciulle e ragazzi, sono
tutti--' She went on in Italian, as if, in thinking of the Italians she
thought in their language.