ppy, but she kept turning suddenly to catch
hold of Birkin's arm, to make sure of him.

'This is something I never expected,' she said. 'It is a different
world, here.'

They went on into a snow meadow. There they were overtaken by the
sledge, that came tinkling through the silence. It was another mile
before they came upon Gudrun and Gerald on the steep up-climb, beside
the pink, half-buried shrine.

Then they passed into a gulley, where were walls of black 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 slowly 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 imminence 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 hollow, the passage was wet
with snow, it was a real, warm interior.

The new-comers tramped up the bare wooden stairs, following 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-coloured wood, floor, walls, ceiling, door, all of the same warm
gold panelling of oiled pine. There was a window opposite the door, but
low down, because the roof sloped. Under the slope of the ceiling were
the table with wash-hand bowl and jug, and across, another table with
mirror. On either side the door were two beds piled high with an
enormous blue-checked overbolster, enormou