Page 595 - women-in-love

slopes of snow and black rock, and at the end, like the navel
of the earth, a white-folded wall, and two peaks glimmer-
ing in the late light. Straight in front ran the cradle of silent
snow, between the great slopes that were fringed with a little
roughness of pine-trees, like hair, round the base. But the
cradle of snow ran on to the eternal closing-in, where the
walls of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the moun-
tain peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was the
centre, the knot, the navel of the world, where the earth be-
longed to the skies, pure, unapproachable, impassable.
It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture. She crouched in
front of the window, clenching her face in her hands, in a
sort of trance. At last she had arrived, she had reached her
place. Here at last she folded her venture and settled down
like a crystal in the navel of snow, and was gone.
Gerald bent above her and was looking out over her
shoulder. Already he felt he was alone. She was gone. She was
completely gone, and there was icy vapour round his heart.
He saw the blind valley, the great cul-de-sac of snow and
mountain peaks, under the heaven. And there was no way
out. The terrible silence and cold and the glamorous white-
ness of the dusk wrapped him round, and she remained
crouching before the window, as at a shrine, a shadow.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked, in a voice that sounded de-
tached and foreign. At least she might acknowledge he was
with her. But she only averted her soft, mute face a little
from his gaze. And he knew that there were tears in her
eyes, her own tears, tears of her strange religion, that put
him to nought.

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