.

So that she caught at little things, which saved her from
being swept forward headlong in the tide of passion that leaps
on into the Infinite in a great mass, triumphant and flinging
its own course. She wanted to get out of this fixed, leaping,
forward-travelling movement, to rise from it as a bird rises
with wet, limp feet from the sea, to lift herself as a bird
lifts its breast and thrusts its body from the pulse and heave
of a sea that bears it forward to an unwilling conclusion, tear
herself away like a bird on wings, and in open space where there
is clarity, rise up above the fixed, surcharged motion, a
separate speck that hangs suspended, moves this way and that,
seeing and answering before it sinks again, having chosen or
found the direction in which it shall be carried forward.

And it was as if she must grasp at something, as if her wings
were too weak to lift her straight off the heaving motion. So
she caught sight of the wicked, odd little faces carved in
stone, and she stood before them arrested.

These sly little faces peeped out of the grand tide of the
cathedral like something that knew better. They knew quite well,
these little imps that retorted on man's own illusion, that the
cathedral was not absolute. They winked and leered, giving
suggestion of the many things that had been left out of the
great concept of the church. "However much there is inside here,
there's a good deal they haven't got in," the little faces
mocked.

Apart from the lift and spring of the great impulse towards
the altar, these little faces had separate wills, separate
motions, separate knowledge, which rippled back in defiance of
the tide, and laughed in triumph of their own very
littleness.

"Oh, look!" cried Anna. "Oh, look how adorable, the faces!
Look at her."

Brangwen looked unwillingly. This was the voice of the
serpent in his Eden. She pointed him to a plump, sly, malicious
little face carved in stone.

"He knew her, the man who carved her," said Anna. "I'm sure
she was his wife."

"It isn't a woman at all, it's a man," said Brangwen
curtly.

"Do you think so?--No! That isn't a man. That is no
man's face."

Her voice sounded rather jeering. He laughed shortly, and
went on. But she would not go forward with him. She loitered
about the carvings. And he could not go forward without her. He
waited impatient of this counteraction. She was spoiling his
passionate intercourse with the cathedral. His brows be