fists from the shawl. He could tell the woman her child was
asleep. But he must go to the other landing. He started. There
was the sound of the owls--the moaning of the woman. What
an uncanny sound! It was not human--at least to a man.

He went down to her room, entering softly. She was lying
still, with eyes shut, pale, tired. His heart leapt, fearing she
was dead. Yet he knew perfectly well she was not. He saw the way
her hair went loose over her temples, her mouth was shut with
suffering in a sort of grin. She was beautiful to him--but
it was not human. He had a dread of her as she lay there. What
had she to do with him? She was other than himself.

Something made him go and touch her fingers that were still
grasped on the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and looked at
him. She did not know him as himself. But she knew him as the
man. She looked at him as a woman in childbirth looks at the man
who begot the child in her: an impersonal look, in the extreme
hour, female to male. Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding
peace went over him, burning his heart and his entrails, passing
off into the infinite.

When her pains began afresh, tearing her, he turned aside,
and could not look. But his heart in torture was at peace, his
bowels were glad. He went downstairs, and to the door, outside,
lifted his face to the rain, and felt the darkness striking
unseen and steadily upon him.

The swift, unseen threshing of the night upon him silenced
him and he was overcome. He turned away indoors, humbly. There
was the infinite world, eternal, unchanging, as well as the
world of life.

CHAPTER III

CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY

Tom Brangwen never loved his own son as he loved his
stepchild Anna. When they told him it was a boy, he had a thrill
of pleasure. He liked the confirmation of fatherhood. It gave
him satisfaction to know he had a son. But he felt not very much
outgoing to the baby itself. He was its father, that was
enough.

He was glad that his wife was mother of his child. She was
serene, a little bit shadowy, as if she were transplanted. In
the birth of the child she seemed to lose connection with her
former self. She became now really English, really Mrs.
Brangwen. Her vitality, however, seemed lowered.

She was still, to Brangwen, immeasurably beautiful. She was
still passionate, with a flame of being. But the flame was not
robust and present. Her eyes shone, her face glowed for him, but
like some flowe