The Rainbow

She had her blind agonies, when she wanted him, she wanted

him. But from the moment of his departure, he had become a

visionary thing of her own. All her roused torment and passion

and yearning she turned to him.

She kept a diary, in which she wrote impulsive thoughts.

Seeing the moon in the sky, her own heart surcharged, she went

and wrote: "If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down."

It meant so much to her, that sentence--she put into it

all the anguish of her youth and her young passion and yearning.

She called to him from her heart wherever she went, her limbs

vibrated with anguish towards him wherever she was, the

radiating force of her soul seemed to travel to him, endlessly,

endlessly, and in her soul's own creation, find him.

But who was he, and where did he exist? In her own desire

only.

She received a post-card from him, and she put it in her

bosom. It did not mean much to her, really. The second day, she

lost it, and never even remembered she had had it, till some

days afterwards.

The long weeks went by. There came the constant bad news of

the war. And she felt as if all, outside there in the world,

were a hurt, a hurt against her. And something in her soul

remained cold, apathetic, unchanging.

Her life was always only partial at this time, never did she

live completely. There was the cold, unliving part of her. Yet

she was madly sensitive. She could not bear herself. When a

dirty, red-eyed old woman came begging of her in the street, she

started away as from an unclean thing. And then, when the old

woman shouted acrid insults after her, she winced, her limbs

palpitated with insane torment, she could not bear herself.

Whenever she thought of the red-eyed old woman, a sort of

madness ran in inflammation over her flesh and her brain, she

almost wanted to kill herself.

And in this state, her sexual life flamed into a kind of

disease within her. She was so overwrought and sensitive, that

the mere touch of coarse wool seemed to tear her nerves.