 only
know that I can't be expected to take count of them all. You can't expect me to
know them, just because they happen to be there. As far as I go they might as
well not be there.«
    »Exactly,« he replied.
    »Mightn't they?« she asked again.
    »Just as well,« he repeated. And there was a little pause.
    »Except that they are there, and that's a nuisance,« she said. »There are my
sons-in-law,« she went on, in a sort of monologue. »Now Laura's got married,
there's another. And I really don't know John from James yet. They come up to me
and call me mother. I know what they will say - How are you, mother? I ought to
say, I am not your mother, in any sense. But what is the use? There they are. I
have had children of my own. I suppose I know them from another woman's
children.«
    »One would suppose so,« he said.
    She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps that she was
talking to him. And she lost her thread.
    She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess what she was
looking for, nor what she was thinking. Evidently she noticed her sons.
    »Are my children all there?« she asked him abruptly.
    He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps.
    »I scarcely know them, except Gerald,« he replied.
    »Gerald!« she exclaimed. »He's the most wanting of them all. You'd never
think it, to look at him now, would you?«
    »No,« said Birkin.
    The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him heavily for some
time.
    »Ay,« she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that sounded profoundly
cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he dared not realise. And Mrs. Crich moved
away, forgetting him. But she returned on her traces.
    »I should like him to have a friend,« she said. »He has never had a friend.«
    Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and watching heavily. He
could not understand them. »Am I my brother's keeper?« he said to himself,
almost flippantly.
    Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was Cain's cry. And
Gerald was Cain,
