ing it--not to make Cloom finer for
himself, not to save his own soul or carve out a life for himself, but
this--to make of himself this mysterious immortality. Always he had
waited for "something" to happen, always at moments of keenest pleasure
he had been conscious there was more he did not feel: depths unplumbed,
heights unscaled, some master-rapture that would explain all the others
and that he never came upon. Even beauty had had this sting for him; he
had always felt that, however lovely a thing were, there was something
more beautiful just round the corner, for ever slipping ahead, like a
star reflected in a rain-filled rut. Now for the first time he was aware
of a dizzying sensation as though for one moment the gleam had stayed
still, as if Beauty for a flash were not withdrawing herself, as though
time for one moment stood, and that moment was self-sufficient, free of
the perpetual something that was always just ahead--more, actually
capturing that something. The moment had the quality of immortality,
although it reeled and was caught up again in the inexorable march, but,
drunken with it, he stayed tingling in the cold dawn.

And if, mixed with that draught, there were this much of venom--that he
rejoiced at having at last so ousted Archelaus, in the fact that indeed
flesh of his flesh should inherit after him and Archelaus be outcast for
ever, at least in that first rapture he was unaware of it.

BOOK III

RIPENING

CHAPTER I

UNDER-CURRENTS

Spring waxed full, buds burst into flower, then petals dropped and the
hard green fruit began to swell, and the blades of the corn showed
perceptibly higher every week. Summer, warm and lazy, big with all her
ripening store, brooded upon the land, and Phoebe Ruan, guarding the
growing life she held, seemed, with all the care taken of her, to lose
vigour and gaiety. She seemed to wish to withdraw from everyone, from
Ishmael most of all, as though she only wished to sit and commune with
the secret soul of the child beneath her heart. She was almost beautiful
these days, touched by a gravity new to her, and with an added poise.
For the first time it was as though she found sufficient support in her
own company and did not need to be for ever following and leaning upon
other people. To look at, sitting so withdrawn, her eyes watching
something unseen of human gaze, she was perfect; even in intercourse she
would have been more nearly so than ever before