Page 581 - women-in-love

compartment, large florid Belgian business-men with long
brown beards, talking incessantly in an ugly French she was
too tired to follow.
It seemed the train ran by degrees out of the darkness
into a faint light, then beat after beat into the day. Ah, how
weary it was! Faintly, the trees showed, like shadows. Then a
house, white, had a curious distinctness. How was it? Then
she saw a village—there were always houses passing.
This was an old world she was still journeying through,
winter-heavy and dreary. There was plough-land and
pasture, and copses of bare trees, copses of bushes, and
homesteads naked and work-bare. No new earth had come
to pass.
She looked at Birkin’s face. It was white and still and eter-
nal, too eternal. She linked her fingers imploringly in his,
under the cover of her rug. His fingers responded, his eyes
looked back at her. How dark, like a night, his eyes were,
like another world beyond! Oh, if he were the world as well,
if only the world were he! If only he could call a world into
being, that should be their own world!
The Belgians left, the train ran on, through Luxembourg,
through Alsace-Lorraine, through Metz. But she was blind,
she could see no more. Her soul did not look out.
They came at last to Basle, to the hotel. It was all a drift-
ing trance, from which she never came to. They went out in
the morning, before the train departed. She saw the street,
the river, she stood on the bridge. But it all meant nothing.
She remembered some shops—one full of pictures, one with
orange velvet and ermine. But what did these signify?—

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