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In a dismal rainy March, with Catherine eight months pregnant, they decide to move to town to be closer to a hospital.
For the first time in the novel you\'re given an exact date, March 1918. Seen from hindsight, there\'s a little ironic twist here. Henry notes the German offensive; the war seems to be grinding on forever. But we know that only nine months later, in November, it was all over.
Catherine makes preparations for childbirth. Henry, feeling left out, begins to go to a local gym to box for exercise. It\'s almost as if now that Catherine has become, in her own words, \"like a big flour-barrel,\" he must work off his animal energy in aggressive exercise.
The chapter ends with an urgent and disturbing little sentence about something \"hurrying\" them, an echo of Andrew Marvell\'s poem quoted in Chapter 23.
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