Page 578 - women-in-love

the unutterable peace of darkness in his, this was the all-
in-all.
They stood up and looked ahead. Low lights were seen
down the darkness. This was the world again. It was not the
bliss of her heart, nor the peace of his. It was the superficial
unreal world of fact. Yet not quite the old world. For the
peace and the bliss in their hearts was enduring.
Strange, and desolate above all things, like disembark-
ing from the Styx into the desolated underworld, was this
landing at night. There was the raw, half-lighted, covered-in
vastness of the dark place, boarded and hollow underfoot,
with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight
of the big, pallid, mystic letters ‘OSTEND,’ standing in the
darkness. Everybody was hurrying with a blind, insect-like
intentness through the dark grey air, porters were calling
in un-English English, then trotting with heavy bags, their
colourless blouses looking ghostly as they disappeared; Ur-
sula stood at a long, low, zinc-covered barrier, along with
hundreds of other spectral people, and all the way down the
vast, raw darkness was this low stretch of open bags and
spectral people, whilst, on the other side of the barrier, pal-
lid officials in peaked caps and moustaches were turning the
underclothing in the bags, then scrawling a chalk-mark.
It was done. Birkin snapped the hand bags, off they went,
the porter coming behind. They were through a great door-
way, and in the open night again—ah, a railway platform!
Voices were still calling in inhuman agitation through the
dark-grey air, spectres were running along the darkness be-
tween the train.

578 Women in Love