Free Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams

you. And as you’re asleep to begin with, and as you don’t know what the conversation was about, and as you don’t know whether he wants you to agree or disagree though you’d do either for peace, you’ll find it very difficult to be nice him. I have never,” Isabel went on, pouring milk into a saucepan, “really quarrelled with Roger.…”
    â€œIsabel!” Sir Bernard murmured.
    â€œNot really,” Isabel persisted, “except once, and that was when he woke me up by calling out to me very late one night, ‘Isabel, what is there in verse which is the equivalent of the principle of the arch?’ I really was angry then, but he only kept murmuring lines of poetry and trying to see if they were like an arch. All that because a friend of his who had been to dinner had gone away at half-past eleven instead of half-past one. Always remember, Rosamond my child, that a man needs you to get away from.”
    â€œYou mean needs to get away from me, don’t you?” Rosamond asked, looking possessively at Philip.
    â€œNo,” Isabel said, “Sir Bernard, the milk’s boiling … thank you so much. No, Rosamond, I don’t. I mean exactly what I said. A man must have you——”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t keep saying ‘a man,’ Isabel,” Philip remonstrated.
    â€œVery well—give me a spoon, Philip—Philip then must have you there in order to be able to get away. If you weren’t there he wouldn’t be able to get away.”
    Rosamond looked uninterested. Philip reflected what a curious thing it was that so many people he knew should want to chatter like this. His father did it, Ingram did it, Isabel did it. Sometimes he understood it, sometimes he didn’t. But he never understood it as now, suddenly, he understood Rosamond’s arm when she leant forward to pass a plate to her sister; somehow that arm always made him think of the Downs against the sky. There was a line, a curved beauty, a thing that spoke to both mind and heart; a thing that was there for ever. And Rosamond? Rosamond was like them, she was there for ever. It occurred to him that, if she was, then her occasional slowness when he was trying to explain something was there for ever. Well, after all, Rosamond was only human; she couldn’t be absolutely perfect. And then as she stretched out her arm again he cried out that she was perfect, she was more than perfect; the movement of her arm was something frightfully important, and now it was gone. He had seen the verge of a great conclusion of mortal things and then it had vanished. Over that white curve he had looked into incredible space; abysses of intelligence lay beyond it. And in a moment all that lay beyond it was the bright kitchen, and Sir Bernard standing up to go into the other room. He jumped to his feet and with a movement almost of terror took the loaded coffee tray from Isabel.
    â€œQuietly,” Isabel said as they came to the door of the nondescript room where the Ingrams habitually, alone or with their intimates, passed their time. “Quietly; let’s hear what the rescued captive and his saviour are talking about.”
    She opened the door gently, and Ingram’s voice came out to them. “O rhythm!” he was saying, “rhythm is the cheap pseudo-metaphysical slang of our day. At least it was; it’s dying now. Everyone explained everything by talking about rhythm. It’s a curious thing that people who will sneer at a man for doing nothing all his life but making words sound lovely and full of meaning will be quite happy over life so long as they can explain it in words that are almost meaningless. I sometimes think the nearest we can get to meaning is to feel as if there was meaning.”
    â€œYet at least rhythm’s distinctly felt,” said another voice, a rich strange voice; “so far they attempt to discover a knowledge of the