face--and now when she was
travelling into the unknown with Birkin, an utter stranger--was so
great, that it seemed she had no identity, that the child she had been,
playing in Cossethay churchyard, was a little creature of history, not
really herself.

They were at Brussels--half an hour for breakfast. They got down. On
the great station clock it said six o'clock. They had coffee and rolls
and honey in the vast desert refreshment room, so dreary, always so
dreary, dirty, so spacious, such desolation of space. But she washed
her face and hands in hot water, and combed her hair--that was a
blessing.

Soon they were in the train again and moving on. The greyness of dawn
began. There were several people in the 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 eternal, 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 drifting 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?--nothing.

She was not at ease till they were in the train again. Then she was
relieved. So long as they were moving onwards, she was satisfied. They
ca