The Rainbow

Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school

manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy,

bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some uncouth

bird, was not changed in the least. The little Baroness was

smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real charm, a kind of

joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some weasel. Anna at

once respected her, and was on her guard before her,

instinctively attracted by the strange, childlike surety of the

Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. The little baron was

now quite white-haired, very brittle. He was wizened and

wrinkled, yet fiery, unsubdued. Anna looked at his lean body, at

his small, fine lean legs and lean hands as he sat talking, and

she flushed. She recognized the quality of the male in him, his

lean, concentrated age, his informed fire, his faculty for

sharp, deliberate response. He was so detached, so purely

objective. A woman was thoroughly outside him. There was no

confusion. So he could give that fine, deliberate response.

He was something separate and interesting; his hard,

intrinsic being, whittled down by age to an essentiality and a

directness almost death-like, cruel, was yet so unswervingly

sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was

attracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire,

fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her husband's

diffuse heat, than his blind, hot youth?

She seemed to be breathing high, sharp air, as if she had

just come out of a hot room. These strange Skrebenskys made her

aware of another, freer element, in which each person was

detached and isolated. Was not this her natural element? Was not

the close Brangwen life stifling her?

Meanwhile the little baroness, with always a subtle light

stirring of her full, lustrous, hazel eyes, was playing with

Will Brangwen. He was not quick enough to see all her movements.

Yet he watched her steadily, with unchanging, lit-up eyes. She

was a strange creature to him. But she had no power over him.

She flushed, and was irritated. Yet she glanced again and again

at his dark, living face, curiously, as if she despised him. She

despised his uncritical, unironical nature, it had nothing for

her. Yet it angered her as if she were jealous. He watched her

with deferential interest as he would watch a stoat playing. But

he himself was not implicated. He was different in kind. She was

all lambent, biting flames, he was a red fire glowing steadily.

She could get nothing out of him. So she made him flush darkly

by assuming a biting, subtle class-superiority. He flushed, but

still he did not object. He was too different.

Her little boy came in with the nurse. He was a quick, slight

child, with fine perceptiveness, and a cool transitoriness in

his interest. At once he treated Will Brangwen as an outsider.

He stayed by Anna for a moment, acknowledged her, then was gone

again, quick, observant, restless, with a glance of interest at

everything.