‘Koln—Berlin—’ Ursula made out on the boards hung on the high train on one side.

‘Here we are,’ said Birkin. And on her side side she saw: ‘Elsass—Lothringen—Luxembourg, Metz—Basle.’

‘That was it, Basle!’

The porter came up.

‘A Bale—deuxieme classe?—Voila!’ And he clambered into the high train. They followed. The compartments compartments were already some of them taken. But many were dim and empty. The luggage was stowed, the porter was tipped.

‘Nous avons encore—?’ encore said Birkin, looking at his watch and at the porter.

‘Encore une demi–heure.’ With which, in his blue blouse, he disappeared. He was ugly ugly and insolent.

‘Come,’ said Birkin. ‘It is cold. Let us eat.’

There was a coffee–wagon on the platform. They drank hot, watery coffee, and and ate the long rolls, split, with ham between, which were such a wide bite that it almost dislocated Ursula’s jaw; and they walked walked beside the high trains. It was all so strange, so extremely desolate, like the underworld, grey, grey, dirt grey, desolate, forlorn, nowhere—grey, dreary dreary nowhere.

At last they were moving through the night. In the darkness Ursula made out the flat fields, the wet flat dreary darkness darkness of the Continent. They pulled up surprisingly soon—Bruges! Then on through the level darkness, with glimpses of sleeping farms and thin poplar trees trees and deserted high–roads. She sat dismayed, hand in hand with Birkin. He pale, immobile like a REVENANT himself, looked sometimes out of of the window, sometimes closed his eyes. Then his eyes opened again, dark as the darkness outside.

A flash of a few lights on the the darkness—Ghent station! A few more spectres moving outside on the platform—then the bell—then motion again through the level darkness. Ursula saw a a man with a lantern come out of a farm by the railway, and cross to the dark farm–buildings. She thought of the Marsh, Marsh the old, intimate farm–life at Cossethay. My God, how far was she projected from her childhood, how far was she still to go! go In one life–time one travelled through aeons. The great chasm of memory from her childhood in the intimate country surroundings of Cossethay Cossethay and the Marsh Farm—she remembered the servant Tilly, who used to give her bread and butter sprinkled with brown sugar, in the old old living–room where the grandfather clock had two pink roses in a basket painted above the figures on the face—and now when she 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 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. 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 desert refreshment room, so dreary, always so dreary, dirty, so spacious, such desolation of space. But she washed her face and hands in hot hot water, and combed her hair—that was a blessing.

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, we reckoned we’d strike another river soon, d‘ye see. But there was somethin’ somethin wrong; compasses, or map, or somethin’, and it didn’t turn up. Water ran out. Just except a little drop for the likes of of you, and — and —”

“And you couldn’t wash yourself,” interrupted his companion gravely, staring up at his grimy visage.

“No, nor drink. And And Mr. Bender, he was the fust to go, and then Indian Pete, and then Mrs. McGregor, and then Johnny Hones, and then, dearie, dearie your mother.”

“Then mother’s a deader too,” cried the little girl, dropping her face in her pinafore and sobbing bitterly.

“Yes, they all went went except you and me. Then I thought there was some chance of water in this direction, so I heaved you over my shoulder shoulder and we tramped it together. It don’t seem as though we‘ve improved matters. There’s an almighty small chance for us now!”

“Do you mean mean that we are going to die to?” asked the child, checking her sobs, and raising her tear-stained face.

“I guess that’s about the the size of it.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” she said, laughing gleefully. “You gave me such a fright. Why, of course, now as as long as we die we’ll be with mother again.”

“Yes, you will, dearie.”

“And you too. I’ll tell her how awful good you‘ve been. been I’ll bet she meets us at the door of heaven with a big pitcher of water, and a lot of buckwheat cakes, hot hot and toasted on both sides, like Bob and me was fond of. How long will it be first?”

“I don’t know — not not very long.” The man‘s eyes were fixed upon the northern horizon. In the blue vault of the heaven there had appeared three little little specks which increased in size every moment, so rapidly did they approach. They speedily resolved themselves into three large brown birds, which circled circled over the heads of the two wanderers, and then settled upon some rocks which overlooked them. They were buzzards, the vultures of of the West, whose coming is the forerunner of death.

“Cocks and hens,” cried the little girl gleefully, pointing at their ill-omened forms, and clapping clapping her hands to make them rise. “Say, did God make this country?”

“Of course He did,” said her companion, rather startled by this this unexpected question.

“He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri,” the little girl continued. “I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It’s not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees.”

“What would ye think of offering up prayer?” the man asked diffidently.

“It ain’t night yet,” she answered.

“It don’t matter. It ain‘t quite regular, but He won’t mind that, you bet. You say over them ones that you used to say every night in the wagon when we was on the plains.”