He listened with a shade of distaste to her rhapsody, then he said:
'For all that, I don't like it. Their nationalism is just
industrialism--that and a shallow jealousy I detest so much.'
'I think you are wrong--I think you are wrong--' said Hermione. 'It
seems to me purely spontaneous and beautiful, the modern Italian's
PASSION, for it is a passion, for Italy, L'Italia--'
'Do you know Italy well?' Ursula asked of Hermione. Hermione hated to
be broken in upon in this manner. Yet she answered mildly:
'Yes, pretty well. I spent several years of my girlhood there, with my
mother. My mother died in Florence.'
'Oh.'
There was a pause, painful to Ursula and to Birkin. Hermione however
seemed abstracted and calm. Birkin was white, his eyes glowed as if he
were in a fever, he was far too over-wrought. How Ursula suffered in
this tense atmosphere of strained wills! Her head seemed bound round by
iron bands.
Birkin rang the bell for tea. They could not wait for Gudrun any
longer.
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