The Rainbow

Something made him go and touch her fingers that were still

grasped on the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and looked at

him. She did not know him as himself. But she knew him as the

man. She looked at him as a woman in childbirth looks at the man

who begot the child in her: an impersonal look, in the extreme

hour, female to male. Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding

peace went over him, burning his heart and his entrails, passing

off into the infinite.

When her pains began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside,

and could not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, his

bowels were glad. He went downstairs, and to the door, outside,

lifted his face to the rain, and felt the darkness striking

unseen and steadily upon him.

The swift, unseen threshing of the night upon him silenced

him and he was overcome. He turned away indoors, humbly. There

was the infinite world, eternal, unchanging, as well as the

world of life.