Birkin was as thin as Mr. Crich, pale and ill-looking. His figure was narrow but nicely made. He went with a slight trail of one foot, which came only from self-consciousness. Although he was dressed correctly for his part, yet there was an innate incongruity which caused a slight ridiculousness in his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he did not fit at all in the conventional occasion. Yet he subordinated himself to the common idea, travestied himself.
He affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly and marvellously commonplace. And he did it so well, taking the tone of his surroundings, adjusting himself quickly to his interlocutor and his circumstance, that he achieved a verisimilitude of ordinary commonplaceness that usually propitiated his onlookers for the moment, disarmed them from attacking his singleness.
Now he spoke quite easily and pleasantly to Mr. Crich, as they walked along the path; he played with situations like a man on a tight-rope; but always on a tight-rope, pretending nothing but ease.
"I'm sorry we are so late," he was saying. "We couldn't find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots. But you were to the moment."
"We are usually to time," said Mr. Crich.
"And I'm always late," said Birkin. "But to-day I was really punctual, only accidentally not so. I'm sorry."
The two men were gone, there was nothing more to see, for the time. Ursula was left thinking about Birkin. He piqued her, attracted her, and annoyed her.
She wanted to know him more. She had spoken with him once or twice, but only in his official capacity as inspector. She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the same language. But there had been no time for the understanding to develop. And something kept her from him, as well as attracted her to him. There was a certain hostility, a hidden ultimate reserve in him, cold and inaccessible.
Yet she wanted to know him.
"What do you think of Rupert Birkin?" she asked, a little reluctantly, of Gudrun. She did not want to discuss him.
