Welsh Journals

attack. It seemed so unfair, that she should mis- understand him like this. "Anyway, you flirted abominably with that damned Frenchman." They crossed a road and came round a corner under a dark railway bridge. An old beggar whined at them, and he felt a stabbing spasm of disgust, a longing to be very far away. If only he could have her to himself "I'm sick of Cardiff," he went on, "I I wish we could get away together, just together, somewhere where we didn't know anyone." Half automatically he tried to take her arm, but she gave it so un- willingly that he dropped his hand again. "I don't want to get married yet," she replied, "and be an old woman at thirty. I'm going to have a good time first." Pain,. the old pain of doubt, crowded in on his brain why could they never see things in the same way? "But don't you love me?" he ex- claimed, "haven't you told me ?" "I'm quite happy as I am you don't make me want to change, anyway. You're always talking about love. I don't believe any man knows what love is. You think it's only passion. You don't love me, it's only my body Waves of agony swept over him at the repeti- tion of that partial truth that was so profound, so blasphemous a lie. With relief he felt sudden drops of cold rain upon his face, and sought refuge from the unanswerable in silence. The street they were passing along now was dull at the best of times, but to his despondent eyes it appeared as though the rain and the scattered gas-lamps were combining to strip from the tall houses the last vestiges of illusion which some- times the night seemed to weave about them. Their unswerving alignment he felt was an in- credibly straining orderliness, and the battered spear-like railings stood up before them in hard stiff agony. Even the silence, scarcely disturbed by their footfalls, seemed to be arranging itself into straight long lines painful in their tension. He could almost see them, parallel lines of black upon the surging grey unhappiness of his mind. Until, finding them unbearable, longing to see them quiver and shatter and curl into endless whirls of sound, he spoke. "There are times," he told the girl, "when I wonder why on earth I love you. You do all you can to annoy me, you tell me lies about myself, you make me unhappy They had both lost their tempers now, were in carping, critical moods, ice-cold walls of hatred growing up between them. "You aren't always so sweet," she answered. "I wonder why I put up with you, too. Sometimes I just want to make you feel small." The expression irri- tated him, as it always did, and the rain, now fall- ing thick and fine like a dense mist, and trickling down inside his collar, filled him with fury. He was glad that they were nearly at her home. There was only the suburban main road to be crossed, and they would be there. He saw an almost empty tram passing down the main road, a sudden glare of vari-coloured lights. "Do hurry," the girl said, "my feet are getting awfully wet." "It's those silly thin shoes you wear," he re- torted. They were in the road now. "Quick, let's cross before that bus comes." They were half-way over when he happened to glance up the street. It was Saturday night and many of the shops were still open. High electric lights flung down their white glare, and the headlights of an approaching car picked out every detail of the muddy thoroughfare. A gleam caught his wandering eye, he looked up, and half paused in his steady stride, and went on. For there, above the lamps, their supports hid- den, suspended as though by some magic power, he saw the two parallel tram wires, jewelled with raindrops, flinging back every reflection from be- low, so that they were like molten twisting metal, like living flames flung upon the lowering rain clouds, like sudden lightning flashing but unfading. The sight caught him with a quick chill and then a flowering warmth, and his heart beat faster and then missed a beat through one inter- minable second. In that second great joy swept him through had he been another man he could have made a poem then, or written a perfect song. But he had no conscious art of expres- sion, and the flooding realisation and emotion of beauty found no such outlet. Yet he knew that something had happened to him he felt larger than himself, more than himself, as though with one gesture to the cloud-banked sky he could shatter it and all the world about, leaving only himself and herself, the essential selves of them, stark and lonely in that reality of which all matter is but the symbol and the veil. For that second he held all earth and heaven in his mind, and then tears rushed to his eyes as he realised that the vision was passing, leaving no memorial but a fading memory. For an instant only it per- sisted, and measuring their quarrel against it he saw the absurdity of the;r dispute, the silliness of their quibbling minds. Life, he knew sud- denly, was too great for little things like that. They passed quickly into the shadow of the side street where she lived, and where the gas- lamps were only pale smears of light and a scat- tered reflection in the pavement. Still he seemed poised on a flying wave crest of existence, sights and sounds came to him strong, fierce, intense, demanding expression, demanding some gesture as wide and sweeping as this strange emotion. And in his stumbling way he made that gesture. "It's so silly," he told the girl at his side, his voice anguished in its appeal for understanding and sympathy. "It's all so silly Her voice, replying, was acid. "It is," she said, "I'm glad you realise it."