The Rainbow

"No, his beard was dark. You have his brows, I think."

Ursula ceased and became self-conscious. She at once

identified herself with her Polish grandfather.

"And did he have brown eyes?"

"Yes, dark eyes. He was a clever man, as quick as a lion. He

was never still."

Lydia still resented Lensky. When she thought of him, she was

always younger than he, she was always twenty, or twenty-five,

and under his domination. He incorporated her in his ideas as if

she were not a person herself, as if she were just his

aide-de-camp, or part of his baggage, or one among his surgical

appliances. She still resented it. And he was always only

thirty: he had died when he was thirty-four. She did not feel

sorry for him. He was older than she. Yet she still ached in the

thought of those days.

"Did you like my first grandfather best?" asked Ursula.

"I liked them both," said the grandmother.

And, thinking, she became again Lensky's girl-bride. He was

of good family, of better family even than her own, for she was

half German. She was a young girl in a house of insecure

fortune. And he, an intellectual, a clever surgeon and

physician, had loved her. How she had looked up to him! She

remembered her first transports when he talked to her, the

important young man with the severe black beard. He had seemed

so wonderful, such an authority. After her own lax household,

his gravity and confident, hard authority seemed almost God-like

to her. For she had never known it in her life, all her

surroundings had been loose, lax, disordered, a welter.

"Miss Lydia, will you marry me?" he had said to her in

German, in his grave, yet tremulous voice. She had been afraid

of his dark eyes upon her. They did not see her, they were fixed

upon her. And he was hard, confident. She thrilled with the

excitement of it, and accepted. During the courtship, his kisses

were a wonder to her. She always thought about them, and

wondered over them. She never wanted to kiss him back. In her

idea, the man kissed, and the woman examined in her soul the

kisses she had received.

She had never quite recovered from her prostration of the

first days, or nights, of marriage. He had taken her to Vienna,

and she was utterly alone with him, utterly alone in another

world, everything, everything foreign, even he foreign to her.

Then came the real marriage, passion came to her, and she became

his slave, he was her lord, her lord. She was the girl-bride,

the slave, she kissed his feet, she had thought it an honour to

touch his body, to unfasten his boots. For two years, she had

gone on as his slave, crouching at his feet, embracing his

knees.