Page 593 - women-in-love

rock and a river filled with snow, and a still blue sky above.
Through a covered bridge they went, drumming roughly
over the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then
slowly up and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver
cracking his long whip as he walked beside, and calling his
strange wild HUE-HUE!, the walls of rock passing slow-
ly by, till they emerged again between slopes and masses
of snow. Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold
shadow-radiance of the afternoon, silenced by the immi-
nence of the mountains, the luminous, dazing sides of snow
that rose above them and fell away beneath.
They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow,
where stood the last peaks of snow like the heart petals of an
open rose. In the midst of the last deserted valleys of heaven
stood a lonely building with brown wooden walls and white
heavy roof, deep and deserted in the waste of snow, like a
dream. It stood like a rock that had rolled down from the
last steep slopes, a rock that had taken the form of a house,
and was now half-buried. It was unbelievable that one could
live there uncrushed by all this terrible waste of whiteness
and silence and clear, upper, ringing cold.
Yet the sledges ran up in fine style, people came to the
door laughing and excited, the floor of the hostel rang hol-
low, the passage was wet with snow, it was a real, warm
interior.
The new-comers tramped up the bare wooden stairs, fol-
lowing the serving woman. Gudrun and Gerald took the
first bedroom. In a moment they found themselves alone
in a bare, smallish, close-shut room that was all of golden-

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