And
how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible gaiety.
'Now I see,' cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his purely gay
motion, which he had all to himself. 'Mr Birkin, he is a changer.'
Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing that only a
foreigner could have seen and have said this.
'Cosa vuol'dire, Palestra?' she asked, sing-song.
'Look,' said the Contessa, in Italian. 'He is not a man, he is a
chameleon, a creature of change.'
'He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,' said itself over
in Hermione's consciousness. And her soul writhed in the black
subjugation to him, because of his power to escape, to exist, other
than she did, because he was not consistent, not a man, less than a
man. She hated him in a despair that shattered her and broke her down,
so that she suffered sheer dissolution like a corpse, and was
unconscious of everything save the horrible sickness of dissolution
that was taking place within her, body and soul.
The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, really the
dressing-room, communicating with Birkin's bedroom.
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