The Rainbow

In a moment she was clinging safely on his back again, and he

was swimming in deep water. She was used to his nakedness, and

to her mother's nakedness, ever since she was born. They were

clinging to each other, and making up to each other for the

strange blow that had been struck at them. Yet still, on other

days, he would leap again with her from the bridge, daringly,

almost wickedly. Till at length, as he leapt, once, she dropped

forward on to his head, and nearly broke his neck, so that they

fell into the water in a heap, and fought for a few moments with

death. He saved her, and sat on the bank, quivering. But his

eyes were full of the blackness of death. It was as if death had

cut between their two lives, and separated them.

Still they were not separate. There was this curious taunting

intimacy between them. When the fair came, she wanted to go in

the swing-boats. He took her, and, standing up in the boat,

holding on to the irons, began to drive higher, perilously

higher. The child clung fast on her seat.

"Do you want to go any higher?" he said to her, and she

laughed with her mouth, her eyes wide and dilated. They were

rushing through the air.

"Yes," she said, feeling as if she would turn into vapour,

lose hold of everything, and melt away. The boat swung far up,

then down like a stone, only to be caught sickeningly up

again.

"Any higher?" he called, looking at her over his shoulder,

his face evil and beautiful to her.

She laughed with white lips.

He sent the swing-boat sweeping through the air in a great

semi-circle, till it jerked and swayed at the high horizontal.

The child clung on, pale, her eyes fixed on him. People below

were calling. The jerk at the top had almost shaken them both

out. He had done what he could--and he was attracting

censure. He sat down, and let the swingboat swing itself

out.

People in the crowd cried shame on him as he came out of the

swingboat. He laughed. The child clung to his hand, pale and

mute. In a while she was violently sick. He gave her lemonade,

and she gulped a little.

"Don't tell your mother you've been sick," he said. There was

no need to ask that. When she got home, the child crept away

under the parlour sofa, like a sick little animal, and was a

long time before she crawled out.

But Anna got to know of this escapade, and was passionately

angry and contemptuous of him. His golden-brown eyes glittered,

he had a strange, cruel little smile. And as the child watched

him, for the first time in her life a disillusion came over her,

something cold and isolating. She went over to her mother. Her

soul was dead towards him. It made her sick.