The Rainbow

The father adored him, and spoke to him in Polish. It was

queer, the stiff, aristocratic manner of the father with the

child, the distance in the relationship, the classic fatherhood

on the one hand, the filial subordination on the other. They

played together, in their different degrees very separate, two

different beings, differing as it were in rank rather than in

relationship. And the baroness smiled, smiled, smiled, always

smiled, showing her rather protruding teeth, having always a

mysterious attraction and charm.

Anna realized how different her own life might have been, how

different her own living. Her soul stirred, she became as

another person. Her intimacy with her husband passed away, the

curious enveloping Brangwen intimacy, so warm, so close, so

stifling, when one seemed always to be in contact with the other

person, like a blood-relation, was annulled. She denied it, this

close relationship with her young husband. He and she were not

one. His heat was not always to suffuse her, suffuse her,

through her mind and her individuality, till she was of one heat

with him, till she had not her own self apart. She wanted her

own life. He seemed to lap her and suffuse her with his being,

his hot life, till she did not know whether she were herself, or

whether she were another creature, united with him in a world of

close blood-intimacy that closed over her and excluded her from

all the cool outside.

She wanted her own, old, sharp self, detached, detached,

active but not absorbed, active for her own part, taking and

giving, but never absorbed. Whereas he wanted this strange

absorption with her, which still she resisted. But she was

partly helpless against it. She had lived so long in Tom

Brangwen's love, beforehand.

From the Skrebensky's, they went to Will Brangwen's beloved

Lincoln Cathedral, because it was not far off. He had promised

her, that one by one, they should visit all the cathedrals of

England. They began with Lincoln, which he knew well.

He began to get excited as the time drew near to set off.

What was it that changed him so much? She was almost angry,

coming as she did from the Skrebensky's. But now he ran on

alone. His very breast seemed to open its doors to watch for the

great church brooding over the town. His soul ran ahead.

When he saw the cathedral in the distance, dark blue lifted

watchful in the sky, his heart leapt. It was the sign in heaven,

it was the Spirit hovering like a dove, like an eagle over the

earth. He turned his glowing, ecstatic face to her, his mouth

opened with a strange, ecstatic grin.

"There she is," he said.

The "she" irritated her. Why "she"? It was "it". What was the

cathedral, a big building, a thing of the past, obsolete, to

excite him to such a pitch? She began to stir herself to

readiness.