Page 665 - women-in-love

purple sky, a miracle, whilst down below the world was a
bluish shadow, and above, like an annunciation, hovered a
rosy transport in mid-air.
To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted
to gather the glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die.
He saw them, saw they were beautiful. But there arose no
clamour in his breast, only a bitterness that was visionary
in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and unbeautiful, so
that she should not get her support from them. Why did she
betray the two of them so terribly, in embracing the glow of
the evening? Why did she leave him standing there, with
the ice-wind blowing through his heart, like death, to grat-
ify herself among the rosy snow-tips?
‘What does the twilight matter?’ he said. ‘Why do you
grovel before it? Is it so important to you?’
She winced in violation and in fury.
‘Go away,’ she cried, ‘and leave me to it. It is beautiful,
beautiful,’ she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. ‘It is the
most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Don’t try
to come between it and me. Take yourself away, you are out
of place—‘
He stood back a little, and left her standing there, stat-
ue-like, transported into the mystic glowing east. Already
the rose was fading, large white stars were flashing out. He
waited. He would forego everything but the yearning.
‘That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,’ she
said in cold, brutal tones, when at last she turned round to
him. ‘It amazes me that you should want to destroy it. If you
can’t see it yourself, why try to debar me?’ But in reality, he

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