Her father was coming. She bundled the dishes away, flew
round and tidied the room, assumed another character, and again
seated herself. He sat thinking of his carving of Eve. He loved
to go over his carving in his mind, dwelling on every stroke,
every line. How he loved it now! When he went back to his
Creation-panel again, he would finish his Eve, tender and
sparkling. It did not satisfy him yet. The Lord should labour
over her in a silent passion of Creation, and Adam should be
tense as if in a dream of immortality, and Eve should take form
glimmeringly, shadowily, as if the Lord must wrestle with His
own soul for her, yet she was a radiance.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
He found it difficult to say. His soul became shy when he
tried to communicate it.
"I was thinking my Eve was too hard and lively."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She should be more----," he made a
gesture of infinite tenderness.
There was a stillness with a little joy. He could not tell
her any more. Why could he not tell her any more? She felt a
pang of disconsolate sadness. But it was nothing. She went to
him.
Her father came, and found them both very glowing, like an
open flower. He loved to sit with them. Where there was a
perfume of love, anyone who came must breathe it. They were both
very quick and alive, lit up from the other-world, so that it
was quite an experience for them, that anyone else could
exist.
But still it troubled Will Brangwen a little, in his orderly,
conventional mind, that the established rule of things had gone
so utterly. One ought to get up in the morning and wash oneself
and be a decent social being. Instead, the two of them stayed in
bed till nightfall, and then got up, she never washed her face,
but sat there talking to her father as bright and shameless as a
daisy opened out of the dew. Or she got up at ten o'clock, and
quite blithely went to bed again at three, or at half-past four,
stripping him naked in the daylight, and all so gladly and
perfectly, oblivious quite of his qualms. He let her do as she
liked with him, and shone with strange pleasure. She was to
dispose of him as she would. He was translated with gladness to
be in her hands. And down went his qualms, his maxims, his
rules, his smaller beliefs, she scattered them like an expert
skittle-player. He was very much astonished and delighted to see
them scatter.
He stood and gazed and grinned with wonder whilst his Tablets
of Stone went bounding and bumping and splintering down the
hill, dislodged for ever. Indeed, it was true as they said, that
a man wasn't born before he was married. What a change
indeed!