Page 576 - women-in-love

distance, called England, and turned their faces to the un-
fathomed night in front.
They went right to the bows of the softly plunging ves-
sel. In the complete obscurity, Birkin found a comparatively
sheltered nook, where a great rope was coiled up. It was
quite near the very point of the ship, near the black, un-
pierced space ahead. There they sat down, folded together,
folded round with the same rug, creeping in nearer and ever
nearer to one another, till it seemed they had crept right
into each other, and become one substance. It was very cold,
and the darkness was palpable.
One of the ship’s crew came along the deck, dark as the
darkness, not really visible. They then made out the faint-
est pallor of his face. He felt their presence, and stopped,
unsure—then bent forward. When his face was near them,
he saw the faint pallor of their faces. Then he withdrew like
a phantom. And they watched him without making any
sound.
They seemed to fall away into the profound darkness.
There was no sky, no earth, only one unbroken darkness,
into which, with a soft, sleeping motion, they seemed to fall
like one closed seed of life falling through dark, fathomless
space.
They had forgotten where they were, forgotten all that
was and all that had been, conscious only in their heart, and
there conscious only of this pure trajectory through the sur-
passing darkness. The ship’s prow cleaved on, with a faint
noise of cleavage, into the complete night, without know-
ing, without seeing, only surging on.

576 Women in Love