y
when she touched him, he knew her instantly, that she was with
him, near him, that she was the gateway and the way out, that
she was beyond, and that he was travelling in her through the
beyond. Whither?--What does it matter? He responded always.
When she called, he answered, when he asked, her response came
at once, or at length.

Anna's soul was put at peace between them. She looked from
one to the other, and she saw them established to her safety,
and she was free. She played between the pillar of fire and the
pillar of cloud in confidence, having the assurance on her right
hand and the assurance on her left. She was no longer called
upon to uphold with her childish might the broken end of the
arch. Her father and her mother now met to the span of the
heavens, and she, the child, was free to play in the space
beneath, between.

CHAPTER IV

GIRLHOOD OF ANNE BRANGWEN

When Anna was nine years old, Brangwen sent her to the dames'
school in Cossethay. There she went, flipping and dancing in her
inconsequential fashion, doing very much as she liked,
disconcerting old Miss Coates by her indifference to
respectability and by her lack of reverence. Anna only laughed
at Miss Coates, liked her, and patronized her in superb,
childish fashion.

The girl was at once shy and wild. She had a curious contempt
for ordinary people, a benevolent superiority. She was very shy,
and tortured with misery when people did not like her. On the
other hand, she cared very little for anybody save her mother,
whom she still rather resentfully worshipped, and her father,
whom she loved and patronized, but upon whom she depended. These
two, her mother and father, held her still in fee. But she was
free of other people, towards whom, on the whole, she took the
benevolent attitude. She deeply hated ugliness or intrusion or
arrogance, however. As a child, she was as proud and shadowy as
a tiger, and as aloof. She could confer favours, but, save from
her mother and father, she could receive none. She hated people
who came too near to her. Like a wild thing, she wanted her
distance. She mistrusted intimacy.

In Cossethay and Ilkeston she was always an alien. She had
plenty of acquaintances, but no friends. Very few people whom
she met were significant to her. They seemed part of a herd,
undistinguished. She did not take people very seriously.

She had two brothers, Tom, dark-haired, small, volatile, whom
she was intimately related to