‘Probably,’ said Gerald.

Meanwhile Ursula was peeping under one of the cloths. There sat the canary in a corner, bunched and fluffed up for sleep.

‘How ridiculous!’ she cried. ‘It really thinks the night has come! How absurd! Really, how can one have any respect for a creature that is so easily taken in!’

‘Yes,’ sang Hermione, coming also to look. She put her hand on Ursula’s arm and chuckled a low laugh. ‘Yes, doesn’t he look comical?’ she chuckled. ‘Like a stupid husband.’

Then, with her hand still on Ursula’s arm, she drew her away, saying, in her mild sing–song:

‘How did you come here? We saw Gudrun too.’

‘I came to look at the pond,’ said Ursula, ‘and I found Mr Birkin there.’

‘Did you? This is quite a Brangwen land, isn’t it!’

‘I’m afraid I hoped so,’ said Ursula. ‘I ran here for refuge, when I saw you down the lake, just putting off.’

‘Did you! And now we’ve run you to earth.’

Hermione’s eyelids lifted with an uncanny movement, amused but overwrought. She had always her strange, rapt look, unnatural and irresponsible.

‘I was going on,’ said Ursula. ‘Mr Birkin wanted me to see the rooms. Isn’t it delightful to live here? It is perfect.’

‘Yes,’ said Hermione, Hermione abstractedly. Then she turned right away from Ursula, ceased to know her existence.

‘How do you feel, Rupert?’ she sang in a new, affectionate tone, to Birkin.

‘Very well,’ he replied.

‘Were you quite comfortable?’ The curious, sinister, rapt look was on Hermione’s face, she shrugged her bosom in a convulsed movement, and seemed like one half in a trance.

‘Quite comfortable,’ he replied.

There was a long pause, whilst Hermione looked at him for a long time, from under her heavy, drugged eyelids.

‘And you think you’ll be happy here?’ she said at last.

‘I’m sure I shall.’

‘I’m sure I shall do anything for him as I can,’ said the labourer’s wife. ‘And I’m sure our master will; so I HOPE he’ll find himself comfortable.’

Hermione turned and looked at her slowly.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said, and then she turned completely away again. She recovered her position, and lifting her face towards him, and addressing him exclusively, she said:

‘Have you measured the rooms?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve been mending the punt.’

‘Shall we do it now?’ she said slowly, balanced and dispassionate.

‘Have you got a tape measure, Mrs Salmon?’ he said, turning to the woman.

‘Yes sir, I think I can find one,’ replied the woman, bustling immediately to a basket. ‘This is the only one I’ve got, if it will do.’

Hermione took it, though it was offered to him.

“Don’t imagine that I intended to kill him in cold blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper-out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisons, and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South American arrow poison, and which was so powerful that the least grain meant instant death. I spotted the bottle in which this preparation was kept, and when they were all gone, I helped myself to a little of it. I was a fairly good dispenser, so I worked this alkaloid into small, soluble pills, and each pill I put in a box with a similar pill made without the poison. I determined at the time that when I had my chance my gentlemen should each have a draw out of one of these boxes, while I ate the pill that remained. It would be quite as deadly and a good deal less noisy than firing across a handkerchief. From that day I had always my pill boxes about with me. and the time had now come when I was to use them.

“It was nearer one than twelve, and a wild, bleak night, blowing hard and raining in torrents. Dismal as it was outside. I was glad within — so glad that I could have shouted out from pure exultation. If any of you gentlemen have ever pined for a thing, and longed for it during twenty long years, and then suddenly found it within your reach, you would understand my feelings. I lit a cigar, and puffed at it to steady my nerves, but my hands were trembling and my temples throbbing with excitement. As I drove, I could see old John Ferrier and sweet Lucy looking at me out of the darkness and smiling at me, just as plain as I see you all in this room. All the way they were ahead of me, one on each side of the horse until I pulled up at the house in the Brixton Road.

“There was not a soul to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, except the dripping of the rain. When I looked in at the window, I found Drebber all huddled together in a drunken sleep. I shook him by the arm, ‘It’s time to get out.’ I said.

“‘All right, cabby.’ said he.

“I suppose he thought we had come to the hotel that he had mentioned, for he got out without another word, and followed me down the garden. I had to walk beside him to keep him steady, for he was still a little top-heavy. When we came to the door, I opened it and led him into the front room. I give you my word that all the way, the father and the daughter were walking in front of us.

“‘It’s infernally dark,’ said he, stamping about.

“‘We’ll soon have a light,’ I said, striking a match and putting it to a wax candle which I had brought with me. ‘Now, Enoch Drebber,’ I continued, turning to him, and holding the light to my own face, ‘who am l?’