And ever and again he appeared to her as the dread flame of
power. Sometimes, when he stood in the doorway, his face lit up,
he seemed like an Annunciation to her, her heart beat fast. And
she watched him, suspended. He had a dark, burning being that
she dreaded and resisted. She was subject to him as to the Angel
of the Presence. She waited upon him and heard his will, and she
trembled in his service.
Then all this passed away. Then he loved her for her
childishness and for her strangeness to him, for the wonder of
her soul which was different from his soul, and which made him
genuine when he would be false. And she loved him for the way he
sat loosely in a chair, or for the way he came through a door
with his face open and eager. She loved his ringing, eager
voice, and the touch of the unknown about him, his absolute
simplicity.
Yet neither of them was quite satisfied. He felt, somewhere,
that she did not respect him. She only respected him as far as
he was related to herself. For what he was, beyond her, she had
no care. She did not care for what he represented in himself. It
is true, he did not know himself what he represented. But
whatever it was she did not really honour it. She did no service
to his work as a lace-designer, nor to himself as bread-winner.
Because he went down to the office and worked every
day--that entitled him to no respect or regard from her, he
knew. Rather she despised him for it. And he almost loved her
for this, though at first it maddened him like an insult.
What was much deeper, she soon came to combat his deepest
feelings. What he thought about life and about society and
mankind did not matter very much to her: he was right enough to
be insignificant. This was again galling to him. She would judge
beyond him on these things. But at length he came to accept her
judgments, discovering them as if they were his own. It was not
here the deep trouble lay. The deep root of his enmity lay in
the fact that she jeered at his soul. He was inarticulate and
stupid in thought. But to some things he clung passionately. He
loved the Church. If she tried to get out of him, what he
believed, then they were both soon in a white rage.
Did he believe the water turned to wine at Cana? She would
drive him to the thing as a historical fact: so much
rain-water-look at it--can it become grape-juice, wine? For
an instant, he saw with the clear eyes of the mind and said no,
his clear mind, answering her for a moment, rejected the idea.
And immediately his whole soul was crying in a mad, inchoate
hatred against this violation of himself. It was true for him.
His mind was extinguished again at once, his blood was up. In
his blood and bones, he wanted the scene, the wedding, the water
brought forward from the firkins as red wine: and Christ saying
to His mother: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?--mine
hour is not yet come."