. He felt the
inevitable coldness, and in bitterness forgot the fire. He sat
in his coldness of age and isolation. He had his own wife. And
he blamed himself, he sneered at himself, for this clinging to
the young, wanting the young to belong to him.

The child who clung to him wanted her child-husband. As was
natural. And from him, Brangwen, she wanted help, so that her
life might be properly fitted out. But love she did not want.
Why should there be love between them, between the stout,
middle-aged man and this child? How could there be anything
between them, but mere human willingness to help each other? He
was her guardian, no more. His heart was like ice, his face cold
and expressionless. She could not move him any more than a
statue.

She crept to bed, and cried. But she was going to be married
to Will Brangwen, and then she need not bother any more.
Brangwen went to bed with a hard, cold heart, and cursed
himself. He looked at his wife. She was still his wife. Her dark
hair was threaded with grey, her face was beautiful in its
gathering age. She was just fifty. How poignantly he saw her!
And he wanted to cut out some of his own heart, which was
incontinent, and demanded still to share the rapid life of
youth. How he hated himself.

His wife was so poignant and timely. She was still young and
naive, with some girl's freshness. But she did not want any more
the fight, the battle, the control, as he, in his incontinence,
still did. She was so natural, and he was ugly, unnatural, in
his inability to yield place. How hideous, this greedy
middle-age, which must stand in the way of life, like a large
demon.

What was missing in his life, that, in his ravening soul, he
was not satisfied? He had had that friend at school, his mother,
his wife, and Anna? What had he done? He had failed with his
friend, he had been a poor son; but he had known satisfaction
with his wife, let it be enough; he loathed himself for the
state he was in over Anna. Yet he was not satisfied. It was
agony to know it.

Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did
not count his work, anybody could have done it. What had he
known, but the long, marital embrace with his wife! Curious,
that this was what his life amounted to! At any rate, it was
something, it was eternal. He would say so to anybody, and be
proud of it. He lay with his wife in his arms, and she was still
his fulfilment, just the same as ever. And that was the be