The Rainbow - Page 74/493

There were a few moments of stillness. Then gradually, the

tension, the withholding relaxed in him, and he began to flow

towards her. She was beyond him, the unattainable. But he let go

his hold on himself, he relinquished himself, and knew the

subterranean force of his desire to come to her, to be with her,

to mingle with her, losing himself to find her, to find himself

in her. He began to approach her, to draw near.

His blood beat up in waves of desire. He wanted to come to

her, to meet her. She was there, if he could reach her. The

reality of her who was just beyond him absorbed him. Blind and

destroyed, he pressed forward, nearer, nearer, to receive the

consummation of himself, he received within the darkness which

should swallow him and yield him up to himself. If he could come

really within the blazing kernel of darkness, if really he could

be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one

consummation, that were supreme, supreme.

Their coming together now, after two years of married life,

was much more wonderful to them than it had been before. It was

the entry into another circle of existence, it was the baptism

to another life, it was the complete confirmation. Their feet

trod strange ground of knowledge, their footsteps were lit-up

with discovery. Wherever they walked, it was well, the world

re-echoed round them in discovery. They went gladly and

forgetful. Everything was lost, and everything was found. The

new world was discovered, it remained only to be explored.

They had passed through the doorway into the further space,

where movement was so big, that it contained bonds and

constraints and labours, and still was complete liberty. She was

the doorway to him, he to her. At last they had thrown open the

doors, each to the other, and had stood in the doorways facing

each other, whilst the light flooded out from behind on to each

of their faces, it was the transfiguration, glorification, the

admission.

And always the light of the transfiguration burned on in

their hearts. He went his way, as before, she went her way, to

the rest of the world there seemed no change. But to the two of

them, there was the perpetual wonder of the transfiguration.

He did not know her any better, any more precisely, now that

he knew her altogether. Poland, her husband, the war--he

understood no more of this in her. He did not understand her

foreign nature, half German, half Polish, nor her foreign

speech. But he knew her, he knew her meaning, without

understanding. What she said, what she spoke, this was a blind

gesture on her part. In herself she walked strong and clear, he

knew her, he saluted her, was with her. What was memory after

all, but the recording of a number of possibilities which had

never been fulfilled? What was Paul Lensky to her, but an

unfulfilled possibility to which he, Brangwen, was the reality

and the fulfilment? What did it matter, that Anna Lensky was

born of Lydia and Paul? God was her father and her mother. He

had passed through the married pair without fully making Himself

known to them.