el actually seen the
lamp put out. Never before had she noticed, as she noticed now, that
the lamp had a number, an identity--1054. The meek acquiescence of
the lamp, and the man's preoccupied haste, seemed to bear some deep
significance, which, however, she could not seize. But the aspect of
the man afflicted her, she did not know why.

Then a number of other figures, in a long spasmodic procession, passed
up the lane after the man, and were gone out of sight. Their heavy
boots clacked on the pavement. They wore thick, dirty greyish-black
clothes, but no overcoats; small tight caps in their hands, and dark
kerchiefs round their necks: about thirty of them in all, colliers
on their way to one of the pits on the Moorthorne ridge. They walked
quickly, but they did not hurry as their forerunner hurried. Several
of them smoked pipes. Though some walked in pairs, none spoke; none
looked up or aside. With one man walked stolidly a young woman, her
overskirt raised and pulled round her head from the back for a shawl;
but even these two did not converse. The procession closed with one or
two stragglers. Rachel had never seen these pilgrims before, but she
had heard them; and Mrs. Maldon had been acquainted with all their
footfalls. They were tragic to Rachel; they infected her with the most
recondite horror of existence; they left tragedy floating behind them
in the lane like an invisible but oppressive cloud. Their utterly
incurious indifference to Rachel in her peignoir at the window was
somehow harrowing.

The dank lane and vaporous, stagnant landscape were once more dead and
silent, and would for a long time remain so, for though potters begin
work early, colliers begin work much earlier, living in a world of
customs of their own. At last a thin column of smoke issued magically
from a chimney down to the left. Some woman was about; some woman's
day had opened within that house. At the thought of that unseen woman
in that unknown house Rachel could have cried. She could not remain at
the window. She was unhappy; but it was not her woe that overcame her,
for if she was unhappy, her unhappiness was nevertheless exquisite.
It was the mere realization that men and women lived that rendered her
emotions almost insupportable. She felt her youth. She thought, "I am
only a girl, and yet my life is ruined already." And even that thought
she hugged amorously as though it were beautiful. Amid the full
disaster and regret, she was gla