while the men stood in calm little groups, chatting, smoking,
pretending to pay no heed to the rustling animation of the women's
world. But they could not really talk, because of the glassy ravel of
women's excited, cold laughter and running voices. They waited, uneasy,
suspended, rather bored. But Gerald remained as if genial and happy,
unaware that he was waiting or unoccupied, knowing himself the very
pivot of the occasion.

Suddenly Mrs Crich came noiselessly into the room, peering about with
her strong, clear face. She was still wearing her hat, and her sac coat
of blue silk.

'What is it, mother?' said Gerald.

'Nothing, nothing!' she answered vaguely. And she went straight towards
Birkin, who was talking to a Crich brother-in-law.

'How do you do, Mr Birkin,' she said, in her low voice, that seemed to
take no count of her guests. She held out her hand to him.

'Oh Mrs Crich,' replied Birkin, in his readily-changing voice, 'I
couldn't come to you before.'

'I don't know half the people here,' she said, in her low voice. Her
son-in-law moved uneasily away.

'And you don't like strangers?' laughed Birkin. 'I myself can never see
why one should take account of people, just because they happen to be
in the room with one: why SHOULD I know they are there?'

'Why indeed, why indeed!' said Mrs Crich, in her low, tense voice.
'Except that they ARE there. I don't know people whom I find in the
house. The children introduce them to me--"Mother, this is Mr
So-and-so." I am no further. What has Mr So-and-so to do with his own
name?--and what have I to do with either him or his name?'

She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was flattered too that
she came to talk to him, for she took hardly any notice of anybody. He
looked down at her tense clear face, with its heavy features, but he
was afraid to look into her heavy-seeing blue eyes. He noticed instead
how her hair looped in slack, slovenly strands over her rather
beautiful ears, which were not quite clean. Neither was her neck
perfectly clean. Even in that he seemed to belong to her, rather than
to the rest of the company; though, he thought to himself, he was
always well washed, at any rate at the neck and ears.

He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was tense, feeling
that he and the elderly, estranged woman were conferring together like
traitors, like enemies within the camp of the other people. He
resembled a deer, that throws one ear back u