'I know,' he said, 'she'll please herself—she always has done.
I've done my best for them, but that doesn't matter.
They've got themselves to please, and if they can help it they'll please nobody BUT themselves.
But she's a right to consider her mother, and me as well—'
Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts.
'And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than see them getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see everywhere nowadays.
I'd rather bury them—'
'Yes but, you see,' said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored again by this new turn, 'they won't give either you or me the chance to bury them, because they're not to be buried.'
Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent anger.
'Now, Mr Birkin,' he said, 'I don't know what you've come here for, and I don't know what you're asking for.
But my daughters are my daughters—and it's my business to look after them while I can.'
Birkin's brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in mockery.
But he remained perfectly stiff and still.
There was a pause.
'I've nothing against your marrying Ursula,' Brangwen began at length. 'It's got nothing to do with me, she'll do as she likes, me or no me.'
Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting go his consciousness.
After all, what good was this?
It was hopeless to keep it up.
He would sit on till Ursula came home, then speak to her, then go away.
He would not accept trouble at the hands of her father.
It was all unnecessary, and he himself need not have provoked it.
The two men sat in complete silence, Birkin almost unconscious of his own whereabouts.
He had come to ask her to marry him—well then, he would wait on, and ask her.
As for what she said, whether she accepted or not, he did not think about it.
He would say what he had come to say, and that was all he was conscious of.
He accepted the complete insignificance of this household, for him.
But everything now was as if fated.
He could see one thing ahead, and no more.
From the rest, he was absolved entirely for the time being.
It had to be left to fate and chance to resolve the issues.
At length they heard the gate.
They saw her coming up the steps with a bundle of books under her arm.
Her face was bright and abstracted as usual, with the abstraction, that look of being not quite THERE, not quite present to the facts of reality, that galled her father so much.
She had a maddening faculty of assuming a light of her own, which excluded the reality, and within which she looked radiant as if in sunshine.
They heard her go into the dining-room, and drop her armful of books on the table.
'Did you bring me that Girl's Own?' cried Rosalind.
'Yes, I brought it.
But I forgot which one it was you wanted.'
'You would,' cried Rosalind angrily. 'It's right for a wonder.'
Then they heard her say something in a lowered tone.
'Where?' cried Ursula.
Again her sister's voice was muffled.
Brangwen opened the door, and called, in his strong, brazen voice:
'Ursula.'
She appeared in a moment, wearing her hat.
'Oh how do you do!' she cried, seeing Birkin, and all dazzled as if taken by surprise.
He wondered at her, knowing she was aware of his presence.
She had her queer, radiant, breathless manner, as if confused by the actual world, unreal to it, having a complete bright world of her self alone.
'Have I interrupted a conversation?' she asked.
'No, only a complete silence,' said Birkin.