The Rainbow

"How enough?"

"You think you have not enough in me. But how do you know me?

What do you do to make me love you?"

He was flabbergasted.

"I never said I hadn't enough in you," he replied. "I didn't

know you wanted making to love me. What do you want?"

"You don't make it good between us any more, you are not

interested. You do not make me want you."

"And you don't make me want you, do you now?" There was a

silence. They were such strangers.

"Would you like to have another woman?" she asked.

His eyes grew round, he did not know where he was. How could

she, his own wife, say such a thing? But she sat there, small

and foreign and separate. It dawned upon him she did not

consider herself his wife, except in so far as they agreed. She

did not feel she had married him. At any rate, she was willing

to allow he might want another woman. A gap, a space opened

before him.

"No," he said slowly. "What other woman should I want?"

"Like your brother," she said.

He was silent for some time, ashamed also.

"What of her?" he said. "I didn't like the woman."

"Yes, you liked her," she answered persistently.

He stared in wonder at his own wife as she told him his own

heart so callously. And he was indignant. What right had she to

sit there telling him these things? She was his wife, what right

had she to speak to him like this, as if she were a

stranger.

"I didn't," he said. "I want no woman."

"Yes, you would like to be like Alfred."

His silence was one of angry frustration. He was astonished.

He had told her of his visit to Wirksworth, but briefly, without

interest, he thought.

As she sat with her strange dark face turned towards him, her

eyes watched him, inscrutable, casting him up. He began to

oppose her. She was again the active unknown facing him. Must he

admit her? He resisted involuntarily.

"Why should you want to find a woman who is more to you than

me?" she said.

The turbulence raged in his breast.

"I don't," he said.

"Why do you?" she repeated. "Why do you want to deny me?"

Suddenly, in a flash, he saw she might be lonely, isolated,

unsure. She had seemed to him the utterly certain, satisfied,

absolute, excluding him. Could she need anything?

"Why aren't you satisfied with me?--I'm not satisfied

with you. Paul used to come to me and take me like a man does.

You only leave me alone or take me like your cattle, quickly, to

forget me again--so that you can forget me again."