Her mother had flashes of anger.

But the courtship went on. Anna would find occasion to go
shopping in Ilkeston at evening. She always returned with her
cousin; he walking with his head over her shoulder, a little bit
behind her, like the Devil looking over Lincoln, as Brangwen
noted angrily and yet with satisfaction.

To his own wonder, Will Brangwen found himself in an electric
state of passion. To his wonder, he had stopped her at the gate
as they came home from Ilkeston one night, and had kissed her,
blocking her way and kissing her whilst he felt as if some blow
were struck at him in the dark. And when they went indoors, he
was acutely angry that her parents looked up scrutinizing at him
and her. What right had they there: why should they look up! Let
them remove themselves, or look elsewhere.

And the youth went home with the stars in heaven whirling
fiercely about the blackness of his head, and his heart fierce,
insistent, but fierce as if he felt something baulking him. He
wanted to smash through something.

A spell was cast over her. And how uneasy her parents were,
as she went about the house unnoticing, not noticing them,
moving in a spell as if she were invisible to them. She was
invisible to them. It made them angry. Yet they had to submit.
She went about absorbed, obscured for a while.

Over him too the darkness of obscurity settled. He seemed to
be hidden in a tense, electric darkness, in which his soul, his
life was intensely active, but without his aid or attention. His
mind was obscured. He worked swiftly and mechanically, and he
produced some beautiful things.

His favourite work was wood-carving. The first thing he made
for her was a butter-stamper. In it he carved a mythological
bird, a phoenix, something like an eagle, rising on symmetrical
wings, from a circle of very beautiful flickering flames that
rose upwards from the rim of the cup.

Anna thought nothing of the gift on the evening when he gave
it to her. In the morning, however, when the butter was made,
she fetched his seal in place of the old wooden stamper of
oak-leaves and acorns. She was curiously excited to see how it
would turn out. Strange, the uncouth bird moulded there, in the
cup-like hollow, with curious, thick waverings running inwards
from a smooth rim. She pressed another mould. Strange, to lift
the stamp and see that eagle-beaked bird raising its breast to
her. She loved creating it over and over again. And every t