The Rainbow

So that she caught at little things, which saved her from

being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps

on into the Infinite in a great mass, triumphant and flinging

its own course. She wanted to get out of this fixed, leaping,

forward-travelling movement, to rise from it as a bird rises

with wet, limp feet from the sea, to lift herself as a bird

lifts its breast and thrusts its body from the pulse and heave

of a sea that bears it forward to an unwilling conclusion, tear

herself away like a bird on wings, and in open space where there

is clarity, rise up above the fixed, surcharged motion, a

separate speck that hangs suspended, moves this way and that,

seeing and answering before it sinks again, having chosen or

found the direction in which it shall be carried forward.

And it was as if she must grasp at something, as if her wings

were too weak to lift her straight off the heaving motion. So

she caught sight of the wicked, odd little faces carved in

stone, and she stood before them arrested.

These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the

cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well,

these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the

cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, giving

suggestion of the many things that had been left out of the

great concept of the church. "However much there is inside here,

there's a good deal they haven't got in," the little faces

mocked.

Apart from the lift and spring of the great impulse towards

the altar, these little faces had separate wills, separate

motions, separate knowledge, which rippled back in defiance of

the tide, and laughed in triumph of their own very

littleness.

"Oh, look!" cried Anna. "Oh, look how adorable, the faces!

Look at her."

Brangwen looked unwillingly. This was the voice of the

serpent in his Eden. She pointed him to a plump, sly, malicious

little face carved in stone.

"He knew her, the man who carved her," said Anna. "I'm sure

she was his wife."

"It isn't a woman at all, it's a man," said Brangwen

curtly.

"Do you think so?--No! That isn't a man. That is no

man's face."

Her voice sounded rather jeering. He laughed shortly, and

went on. But she would not go forward with him. She loitered

about the carvings. And he could not go forward without her. He

waited impatient of this counteraction. She was spoiling his

passionate intercourse with the cathedral. His brows began to

gather.

"Oh, this is good!" she cried again. "Here is the same

woman--look!--only he's made her cross! Isn't it

lovely! Hasn't he made her hideous to a degree?" She laughed

with pleasure. "Didn't he hate her? He must have been a nice

man! Look at her--isn't it awfully good--just like a

shrewish woman. He must have enjoyed putting her in like that.

He got his own back on her, didn't he?"