When the colour photographs came, Miriam was too happy for thought. Pictures of stained glass, hard crude clear brilliant opaque flat colour, stood in miraculous squares on the screen and pieces of gardens, grass and flowers and trees shining with a shadeless blinding brilliance.
She made vague sounds. “It’s a wonderful achievement,” said Mr. Hancock, smiling with grave delighted approval towards the screen. Miriam felt that he understood, as her ignorance could not do, exactly what it all meant scientifically; but there was something else in the things as they stood, blinding, there that he did not see. It was something that she had seen somewhere, often.
“They’ll never touch pictures.”
“Oh no—there’s no atmosphere; but there’s something else; they’re exactly like something else. …”
Mr. Hancock laughed, a little final crushing laugh that turned away sceptical of further enlightenment.
Miriam sat silent, busily searching for something to express the effect she felt. But she could not tell him what she felt. There was something in this intense hard rich colour like something one sometimes saw when it wasn’t there, a sudden brightening and brightening of all colours till you felt something must break if they grew any brighter—or in the dark, or in one’s mind, suddenly, at any time, unearthly brilliance. He would laugh and think one a little insane; but it was the real certain thing; the one real certain happy thing. And he would not have patience to hear her try to explain; and by that he robbed her of the power of trying to explain. He was not interested in what she thought. Not interested. His own thoughts were statements, things that had been agreed upon and disputed and that people bandied about, competing with each other to put them cleverly. They were not things. It was only by pretending to be interested in these statements and taking sides about them that she could have conversation with him. He liked women who thought in these statements. They always succeeded with men. They had a reputation for wit. Did they really think and take an interest in the things they said, or was it a trick, like “clothes” and “manners”—or was it that women brought up with brothers or living with husbands got into that way of thinking and speaking. Perhaps there was something in it. Something worth cultivating; a fine talent. But it would mean hiding so much, letting so much go; all the real things. The things men never seemed to know about at all. Yet he loved beautiful things; and worried about religion and had found comfort in Literature and Dogma and wanted her to find comfort in it, assuming her difficulties were the same as his own; and knowing the dreadfulness of them. The brilliant unearthly pictures remained in her mind, supporting her through the trial of her consciousness of the stuffiness of her one long-worn dress. Dresses should be fragrant in the evening. The Newlands evening dress was too old fashioned. Things had changed so utterly since last year. There was no money to have it altered. But this was awful. Never again could she go out in the evening, unless alone or with the girls. That would be best, and happiest, really.
VI
Miriam sat on a damp wooden seat at the station. Shivering with exhaustion, she looked across at the early morning distance, misty black and faint misty green. … Something had happened to it. It was not beautiful; or anything. It was not anything. … That was the punishment. … The landscape was dead. All that had come to an end. Her nimble lifeless mind noted the fact. There was dismay in it. Staring at the landscape she felt the lifelessness of her face; as if something had brushed across it and swept the life away, leaving her only sight. She could never feel any more.
Behind her fixed eyes something new seemed moving forward with a strange indifference. Suddenly the landscape unrolled. The rim of the horizon was no longer the edge
