THE BRANGWEN family was going to move from Beldover. It was necessary now for the father to be in town.

Birkin had taken out a marriage licence, yet Ursula deferred from day to day. She would not fix any definite time -- she still wavered. Her month's notice to leave the Grammar School was in its third week. Christmas was not far off.

Gerald waited for the Ursula-Birkin marriage. It was something crucial to him.

`Shall we make it a double-barrelled affair?' he said to Birkin one day.

`Who for the second shot?' asked Birkin.

`Gudrun and me,' said Gerald, the venturesome twinkle in his eyes.

Birkin looked at him steadily, as if somewhat taken aback.

`Serious -- or joking?' he asked.

`Oh, serious. Shall I? Shall Gudrun and I rush in along with you?'

`Do by all means,' said Birkin. `I didn't know you'd got that length.'

`What length?' said Gerald, looking at the other man, and laughing.

`Oh yes, we've gone all the lengths.'

`There remains to put it on a broad social basis, and to achieve a high moral purpose,' said Birkin.

`Something like that: the length and breadth and height of it,' replied Gerald, smiling.

`Oh well,' said Birkin,' it's a very admirable step to take, I should say.'

Gerald looked at him closely.

`Why aren't you enthusiastic?' he asked. `I thought you were such dead nuts on marriage.'

Birkin lifted his shoulders.

`One might as well be dead nuts on noses. There are all sorts of noses, snub and otherwise--'

Gerald laughed.

`And all sorts of marriage, also snub and otherwise?' he said.

`That's it.'

`And you think if I marry, it will be snub?' asked Gerald quizzically, his head a little on one side.

Birkin laughed quickly.

`How do I know what it will be!' he said. `Don't lambaste me with my own parallels--'

Gerald pondered a while.

`But I should like to know your opinion, exactly,' he said.

`On your marriage? -- or marrying? Why should you want my opinion? I've got no opinions. I'm not interested in legal marriage, one way or another. It's a mere question of convenience.'

Still Gerald watched him closely.

`More than that, I think,' he said seriously. `However you may be bored by the ethics of marriage, yet really to marry, in one's own personal case, is something critical, final--'

`You mean there is something final in going to the registrar with a woman?'

`If you're coming back with her, I do,' said Gerald. `It is in some way irrevocable.'

`Yes, I agree,' said Birkin.

`No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter into the married state, in one's own personal instance, is final--'

`I believe it is,' said Birkin, `somewhere.'

`The question remains then, should one do it,' said Gerald.

Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes.

`You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,' he said. `You argue it like a lawyer - or like Hamlet's to-be-or-not-to-be. If I were you I would not marry: but ask Gudrun, not me. You're not marrying me, are you?'

Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech.

`Yes,' he said, `one must consider it coldly. It is something critical. One comes to the point where one must take a step in one direction or another. And marriage is one direction--'

`And what is the other?' asked Birkin quickly.

Gerald looked up at him with hot, strangely-conscious eyes, that the other man could not unde............