Everything was so vague and lovely, and he wanted to wake her
up to the hard, hostile reality. She drew back in resistance.
Still he said nothing. But she felt his power persisting on her,
till she became aware of the strain, she cried out against the
exhaustion. He was forcing her, he was forcing her. And she
wanted so much the joy and the vagueness and the innocence of
her pregnancy. She did not want his bitter-corrosive love, she
did not want it poured into her, to burn her. Why must she have
it? Why, oh, why was he not content, contained?

She sat many hours by the window, in those days when he drove
her most with the black constraint of his will, and she watched
the rain falling on the yew trees. She was not sad, only
wistful, blanched. The child under her heart was a perpetual
warmth. And she was sure. The pressure was only upon her from
the outside, her soul had no stripes.

Yet in her heart itself was always this same strain, tense,
anxious. She was not safe, she was always exposed, she was
always attacked. There was a yearning in her for a fulness of
peace and blessedness. What a heavy yearning it was--so
heavy.

She knew, vaguely, that all the time he was not satisfied,
all the time he was trying to force something from her. Ah, how
she wished she could succeed with him, in her own way! He was
there, so inevitable. She lived in him also. And how she wanted
to be at peace with him, at peace. She loved him. She would give
him love, pure love. With a strange, rapt look in her face, she
awaited his homecoming that night.

Then, when he came, she rose with her hands full of love, as
of flowers, radiant, innocent. A dark spasm crossed his face. As
she watched, her face shining and flower-like with innocent
love, his face grew dark and tense, the cruelty gathered in his
brows, his eyes turned aside, she saw the whites of his eyes as
he looked aside from her. She waited, touching him with her
hands. But from his body through her hands came the
bitter-corrosive shock of his passion upon her, destroying her
in blossom. She shrank. She rose from her knees and went away
from him, to preserve herself. And it was great pain to her.

To him also it was agony. He saw the glistening, flower-like
love in her face, and his heart was black because he did not
want it. Not this--not this. He did not want flowery
innocence. He was unsatisfied. The rage and storm of
unsatisfaction tormented him ceaselessly. Why had she no