His eyes became confused with roused lights, his detached
attention changed to a readiness for her. He was a young man of
twenty-one, with a slender figure and soft brown hair brushed up
on the German fashion straight from his brow.
"Are you staying long?" she asked.
"I've got a month's leave," he said, glancing at Tom
Brangwen. "But I've various places I must go to--put in
some time here and there."
He brought her a strong sense of the outer world. It was as
if she were set on a hill and could feel vaguely the whole world
lying spread before her.
"What have you a month's leave from?" she asked.
"I'm in the Engineers--in the Army."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, glad.
"We're taking you away from your studies," said her
Uncle Tom.
"Oh, no," she replied quickly.
Skrebensky laughed, young and inflammable.
"She won't wait to be taken away," said her father. But that
seemed clumsy. She wished he would leave her to say her own
things.
"Don't you like study?" asked Skrebensky, turning to her,
putting the question from his own case.
"I like some things," said Ursula. "I like Latin and
French--and grammar."
He watched her, and all his being seemed attentive to her,
then he shook his head.
"I don't," he said. "They say all the brains of the army are
in the Engineers. I think that's why I joined them--to get
the credit of other people's brains."
He said this quizzically and with chagrin. And she became
alert to him. It interested her. Whether he had brains or not,
he was interesting. His directness attracted her, his
independent motion. She was aware of the movement of his life
over against hers.
"I don't think brains matter," she said.
"What does matter then?" came her Uncle Tom's intimate,
caressing, half-jeering voice.
She turned to him.
"It matters whether people have courage or not," she
said.
"Courage for what?" asked her uncle.
"For everything."
Tom Brangwen gave a sharp little laugh. The mother and father
sat silent, with listening faces. Skrebensky waited. She was
speaking for him.
"Everything's nothing," laughed her uncle.
She disliked him at that moment.
"She doesn't practice what she preaches," said her father,
stirring in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. "She
has courage for mighty little."
But she would not answer. Skrebensky sat still, waiting. His
face was irregular, almost ugly, flattish, with a rather thick
nose. But his eyes were pellucid, strangely clear, his brown
hair was soft and thick as silk, he had a slight moustache. His
skin was fine, his figure slight, beautiful. Beside him, her
Uncle Tom looked full-blown, her father seemed uncouth. Yet he
reminded her of her father, only he was finer, and he seemed to
be shining. And his face was almost ugly.