The Rainbow

But it was a very dumb, weak, helpless self, a crawling

nursling. He went about very quiet, and in a way, submissive. He

had an unalterable self at last, free, separate,

independent.

She was relieved, she was free of him. She had given him to

himself. She wept sometimes with tiredness and helplessness. But

he was a husband. And she seemed, in the child that was coming,

to forget. It seemed to make her warm and drowsy. She lapsed

into a long muse, indistinct, warm, vague, unwilling to be taken

out of her vagueness. And she rested on him also.

Sometimes she came to him with a strange light in her eyes,

poignant, pathetic, as if she were asking for something. He

looked and he could not understand. She was so beautiful, so

visionary, the rays seemed to go out of his breast to her, like

a shining. He was there for her, all for her. And she would hold

his breast, and kiss it, and kiss it, kneeling beside him, she

who was waiting for the hour of her delivery. And he would lie

looking down at his breast, till it seemed that his breast was

not himself, that he had left it lying there. Yet it was himself

also, and beautiful and bright with her kisses. He was glad with

a strange, radiant pain. Whilst she kneeled beside him, and

kissed his breast with a slow, rapt, half-devotional

movement.

He knew she wanted something, his heart yearned to give it

her. His heart yearned over her. And as she lifted her face,

that was radiant and rosy as a little cloud, his heart still

yearned over her, and, now from the distance, adored her. She

had a flower-like presence which he adored as he stood far off,

a stranger.

The weeks passed on, the time drew near, they were very

gentle, and delicately happy. The insistent, passionate, dark

soul, the powerful unsatisfaction in him seemed stilled and

tamed, the lion lay down with the lamb in him.

She loved him very much indeed, and he waited near her. She

was a precious, remote thing to him at this time, as she waited

for her child. Her soul was glad with an ecstasy because of the

coming infant. She wanted a boy: oh, very much she wanted a

boy.

But she seemed so young and so frail. She was indeed only a

girl. As she stood by the fire washing herself--she was

proud to wash herself at this time--and he looked at her,

his heart was full of extreme tenderness for her. Such fine,

fine limbs, her slim, round arms like chasing lights, and her

legs so simple and childish, yet so very proud. Oh, she stood on

proud legs, with a lovely reckless balance of her full belly,

and the adorable little roundnesses, and the breasts becoming

important. Above it all, her face was like a rosy cloud

shining.