 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 upon the trail behind, and one ear forward, to know what is ahead.
    »People don't really matter,« he said, rather unwilling to continue.
    The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interrogation, as if doubting
his sincerity.
    »How do you mean, matter?« she asked sharply.
    »Not many people are anything at all,« he answered, forced to go deeper than
he wanted to. »They jingle and giggle. It would be much better if they were just
wiped out. Essentially, they don't exist, they aren't there.«
    She watched him steadily while he spoke.
    »But we don't imagine them,« she said sharply.
    »There's nothing to imagine, that's why they don't exist.«
    »Well,« she said, »I would hardly go as far as that. There they are, whether
they exist or no. It doesn't rest with me to decide on their existence. I
