The Rainbow

How proud she was, what a lovely proud thing her young body!

And she loved him to put his hand on her ripe fullness, so that

he should thrill also with the stir and the quickening there. He

was afraid and silent, but she flung her arms round his neck

with proud, impudent joy.

The pains came on, and Oh--how she cried! She would have

him stay with her. And after her long cries she would look at

him, with tears in her eyes and a sobbing laugh on her face,

saying: "I don't mind it really."

It was bad enough. But to her it was never deathly. Even the

fierce, tearing pain was exhilarating. She screamed and

suffered, but was all the time curiously alive and vital. She

felt so powerfully alive and in the hands of such a masterly

force of life, that her bottom-most feeling was one of

exhilaration. She knew she was winning, winning, she was always

winning, with each onset of pain she was nearer to victory.

Probably he suffered more than she did. He was not shocked or

horrified. But he was screwed very tight in the vise of

suffering.

It was a girl. The second of silence on her face when they

said so showed him she was disappointed. And a great blazing

passion of resentment and protest sprang up in his heart. In

that moment he claimed the child.

But when the milk came, and the infant sucked her breast, she

seemed to be leaping with extravagant bliss.

"It sucks me, it sucks me, it likes me--oh, it loves

it!" she cried, holding the child to her breast with her two

hands covering it, passionately.

And in a few moments, as she became used to her bliss, she

looked at the youth with glowing, unseeing eyes, and said: "Anna Victrix."

He went away, trembling, and slept. To her, her pains were

the wound-smart of a victor, she was the prouder.

When she was well again she was very happy. She called the

baby Ursula. Both Anna and her husband felt they must have a

name that gave them private satisfaction. The baby was tawny

skinned, it had a curious downy skin, and wisps of bronze hair,

and the yellow grey eyes that wavered, and then became

golden-brown like the father's. So they called her Ursula

because of the picture of the saint.

It was a rather delicate baby at first, but soon it became

stronger, and was restless as a young eel. Anna was worn out

with the day-long wrestling with its young vigour.

As a little animal, she loved and adored it and was happy.

She loved her husband, she kissed his eyes and nose and mouth,

and made much of him, she said his limbs were beautiful, she was

fascinated by the physical form of him.