'Father came here with mother,' she said, 'when they first knew each
other. He loves it--he loves the Minster. Do you?' 'Yes. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the dark hollow.
We'll have our high tea at the Saracen's Head.' As they descended, they heard the Minster bells playing a hymn, when
the hour had struck six.
Glory to thee my God this night For all the blessings of the light-So, to Ursula's ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the unseen
sky on to the dusky town. It was like dim, bygone centuries sounding.
It was all so far off. She stood in the old yard of the inn, smelling
of straw and stables and petrol. Above, she could see the first stars.
What was it all? This was no actual world, it was the dream-world of
one's childhood--a great circumscribed reminiscence. The world had
become unreal. She herself was a strange, transcendent reality.
They sat together in a little parlour by the fire.
'Is it true?' she said, wondering.
'What?' 'Everything--is everything true?' 'The best is true,' he said, grimacing at her.
'Is it?' she replied, laughing, but unassured.
She looked at him. He seemed still so separate. New eyes were opened in
her soul. She saw a strange creature from another world, in him. It was
as if she were enchanted, and everything were metamorphosed. She
recalled again the old magic of the Book of Genesis, where the sons of
God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair. And he was one of
these, one of these strange creatures from the beyond, looking down at
her, and seeing she was fair.
He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that was
upturned exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, glinting
faintly golden with the dew of the first light. And he was smiling
faintly as if there were no speech in the world, save the silent
delight of flowers in each other. Smilingly they delighted in each
other's presence, pure presence, not to be thought of, even known. But
his eyes had a faintly ironical contraction.
And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling on the
hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his loins, and put her
face against his thigh. Riches! Riches! She was overwhelmed with a
sense of a heavenful of riches.
'We love each other,' she said in delight.
'More than that,' he answered, looking down at her with his glimmering,
easy face.
Unconsciously, with her sensitive fingertips, she was tracing the back
of his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow there. She had
discovered something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful
than life itself. It was the strange mystery of his life-motion, there,
at the back of the thighs, down the flanks. It was a strange reality of
his being, the very stuff of being, there in the straight downflow of
the thighs. It was here she discovered him one of the sons of God such
as were in the beginning of the world, not a man, something other,
something more.