The Rainbow

Then immediately she began to retaliate on him. She too was a

hawk. If she imitated the pathetic plover running plaintive to

him, that was part of the game. When he, satisfied, moved with a

proud, insolent slouch of the body and a half-contemptuous drop

of the head, unaware of her, ignoring her very existence, after

taking his fill of her and getting his satisfaction of her, her

soul roused, its pinions became like steel, and she struck at

him. When he sat on his perch glancing sharply round with

solitary pride, pride eminent and fierce, she dashed at him and

threw him from his station savagely, she goaded him from his

keen dignity of a male, she harassed him from his unperturbed

pride, till he was mad with rage, his light brown eyes burned

with fury, they saw her now, like flames of anger they flared at

her and recognized her as the enemy.

Very good, she was the enemy, very good. As he prowled round

her, she watched him. As he struck at her, she struck back.

He was angry because she had carelessly pushed away his tools

so that they got rusty.

"Don't leave them littering in my way, then," she said.

"I shall leave them where I like," he cried.

"Then I shall throw them where I like."

They glowered at each other, he with rage in his hands, she

with her soul fierce with victory. They were very well matched.

They would fight it out.

She turned to her sewing. Immediately the tea-things were

cleared away, she fetched out the stuff, and his soul rose in

rage. He hated beyond measure to hear the shriek of calico as

she tore the web sharply, as if with pleasure. And the run of

the sewing-machine gathered a frenzy in him at last.

"Aren't you going to stop that row?" he shouted. "Can't you

do it in the daytime?"

She looked up sharply, hostile from her work.

"No, I can't do it in the daytime. I have other things to do.

Besides, I like sewing, and you're not going to stop me doing

it."

Whereupon she turned back to her arranging, fixing,

stitching, his nerves jumped with anger as the sewing-machine

started and stuttered and buzzed.

But she was enjoying herself, she was triumphant and happy as

the darting needle danced ecstatically down a hem, drawing the

stuff along under its vivid stabbing, irresistibly. She made the

machine hum. She stopped it imperiously, her fingers were deft

and swift and mistress.

If he sat behind her stiff with impotent rage it only made a

trembling vividness come into her energy. On she worked. At last

he went to bed in a rage, and lay stiff, away from her. And she

turned her back on him. And in the morning they did not speak,

except in mere cold civilities.