The Rainbow

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!