The Rainbow

"And who did you see?"

"I saw nobody."

"Nobody?"

"No--who should I see?"

"You saw nobody you knew?"

"No, I didn't," he replied irritably.

She believed him, and her mood became cold.

"I bought a book," he said, handing her the propitiatory

volume.

She idly looked at the pictures. Beautiful, the pure women,

with their clear-dropping gowns. Her heart became colder. What

did they mean to him?

He sat and waited for her. She bent over the book.

"Aren't they nice?" he said, his voice roused and glad. Her

blood flushed, but she did not lift her head.

"Yes," she said. In spite of herself, she was compelled by

him. He was strange, attractive, exerting some power over

her.

He came over to her, and touched her delicately. Her heart

beat with wild passion, wild raging passion. But she resisted as

yet. It was always the unknown, always the unknown, and she

clung fiercely to her known self. But the rising flood carried

her away.

They loved each other to transport again, passionately and

fully.

"Isn't it more wonderful than ever?" she asked him, radiant

like a newly opened flower, with tears like dew.

He held her closer. He was strange and abstracted.

"It is always more wonderful," she asseverated, in a glad,

child's voice, remembering her fear, and not quite cleared of it

yet.

So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and

conflict between them. One day it seemed as if everything was

shattered, all life spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste.

The next day it was all marvellous again, just marvellous. One

day she thought she would go mad from his very presence, the

sound of his drinking was detestable to her. The next day she

loved and rejoiced in the way he crossed the floor, he was sun,

moon and stars in one.

She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability.

When the perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget that

they would pass away again. She was uneasy. The surety, the

surety, the inner surety, the confidence in the abidingness of

love: that was what she wanted. And that she did not get. She

knew also that he had not got it.

Nevertheless it was a marvellous world, she was for the most

part lost in the marvellousness of it. Even her great woes were

marvellous to her.

She could be very happy. And she wanted to be happy. She

resented it when he made her unhappy. Then she could kill him,

cast him out. Many days, she waited for the hour when he would

be gone to work. Then the flow of her life, which he seemed to

damn up, was let loose, and she was free. She was free, she was

full of delight. Everything delighted her. She took up the rug

and went to shake it in the garden. Patches of snow were on the

fields, the air was light. She heard the ducks shouting on the

pond, she saw them charge and sail across the water as if they

were setting off on an invasion of the world. She watched the

rough horses, one of which was clipped smooth on the belly, so

that he wore a jacket and long stockings of brown fur, stand

kissing each other in the wintry morning by the church-yard

wall. Everything delighted her, now he was gone, the insulator,

the obstruction removed, the world was all hers, in connection

with her.