ican Literature" will remember that he interpreted the whale as the subconscious seven-eighths of man's life, what goes on beneath the twinkling surface of intelligence, "the deepest blood-being of the white race." The golden stallion has exactly the same significance: he is the deepest instinctive "blood-consciousness." It may be noted in passing that the big bay stallion in "Sons and Lovers," the red Arab mare in "Women in Love," and the horses which thunder ominously through two or three pages of "Rainbow" are steeds of the same stable. See also Plato's horses.
The characters arrange themselves in a scale beginning with the horse, and descending, according to their degrees of "blood-potency," to Flora, who is an ordinary woman of the social world. Next to the horse is his own groom, Lewis, who is a dark, silent, shaggy mystical Welshman with a sacred beard; he understands the horse, speaks to him in Welsh and is in perfect sympathy with him. There is a second groom of mixed Mexican and Indian blood; he is almost as sympathetic. Then comes the mother, Mrs. Witt, from Louisiana, inheriting a strain of dark Welsh blood through her grandmother: having exhausted society, despising most of the human animals, including her son-in-law, she admires the horse and shares his spirit. Next comes Lou, the daughter, an American girl, much Europeanized, very sophisticated. At twenty-five she marries an artist, the best thing in sight, handsome, healthy, with a desire for a fashionable success in London. Lou buys St. Mawr for her husband, hoping that he will ride the splendid creature with effect. The husband, Rico, has outgrown horses, doesn't like St. Mawr, and the golden stallion has an instinctive repugnance for him. Ill managed, St. Mawr throws his
