they would be secretly associated. And he would be helpless in the
association with her. Her soul exulted.
'Good-bye! I'm so glad you forgive me. Gooood-bye!'
Hermione sang her farewell, and waved her hand. Gerald automatically
took the oar and pushed off. But he was looking all the time, with a
glimmering, subtly-smiling admiration in his eyes, at Gudrun, who stood
on the shoal shaking the wet book in her hand. She turned away and
ignored the receding boat. But Gerald looked back as he rowed,
beholding her, forgetting what he was doing.
'Aren't we going too much to the left?' sang Hermione, as she sat
ignored under her coloured parasol.
Gerald looked round without replying, the oars balanced and glancing in
the sun.
'I think it's all right,' he said good-humouredly, beginning to row
again without thinking of what he was doing. And Hermione disliked him
extremely for his good-humoured obliviousness, she was nullified, she
could not regain ascendancy.
CHAPTER XI.
AN ISLAND
Meanwhile Ursula had wandered on from Willey Water along the course of
the bright little stream. The afternoon was full of larks' singing. On
the bright hill-sides was a subdued smoulder of gorse. A few
forget-me-nots flowered by the water. There was a rousedness and a
glancing everywhere.
She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted to go to the
mill-pond above. The big mill-house was deserted, save for a labourer
and his wife who lived in the kitchen. So she passed through the empty
farm-yard and through the wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bank
by the sluice. When she got to the top, to see the old, velvety surface
of the pond before her, she noticed a man on the bank, tinkering with a
punt. It was Birkin sawing and hammering away.
She stood at the head of the sluice, looking at him. He was unaware of
anybody's presence. He looked very busy, like a wild animal, active and
intent. She felt she ought to go away, he would not want her. He seemed
to be so much occupied. But she did not want to go away. Therefore she
moved along the bank till he would look up.
Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped his tools and came
forward, saying:
'How do you do? I'm making the punt water-tight. Tell me if you think
it is right.'
She went along with him.
'You are your father's daughter, so you can tell me if it will do,' he
said.
She bent to look at the patched punt.
'I am sure I am my father's daughter,' she said, fearful of having to
judge. 'But I don't know anything about carpentry. It LOOKS right,
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