o attention to it, or to the violent and reiterated
cries of the Arabs who stood behind it, anxious to earn a tip by getting
it weighed and registered quickly. Apparently they were wrapped in
savage dreams. At length a light shone through the small opening of the
ticket-office, the men in smocks stirred and threw down their cigarette
stumps, and the few travellers pressed forward against the counter,
and pointed to their boxes with their sticks and hands. Suzanne Charpot
assumed an expression of attentive suspicion, and Domini ceased
from walking up and down. Several of the recruits came in hastily,
accompanied by two Zouaves. They were wet, and looked dazed and tired
out. Grasping their bags and bundles they went towards the platform. A
train glided slowly in, gleaming faintly with lights. Domini's trunks
were slammed down on the weighing machine, and Suzanne, drawing out her
purse, took her stand before the shining hole of the ticket-office.

In the wet darkness there rose up a sound like a child calling out an
insulting remark. This was followed immediately by the piping of a horn.
With a jerk the train started, passed one by one the station lamps, and,
with a steady jangling and rattling, drew out into the shrouded country.
Domini was in a wretchedly-lit carriage with three Frenchmen, facing
the door which opened on to the platform. The man opposite to her was
enormously fat, with a coal-black beard growing up to his eyes. He wore
black gloves and trousers, a huge black cloth hat, and a thick black
cloak with a black buckle near the throat. His eyes were shut, and his
large, heavy head drooped forward. Domini wondered if he was travelling
to the funeral of some relative. The two other men, one of whom looked
like a commercial traveller, kept shifting their feet upon the hot-water
tins that lay on the floor, clearing their throats and sighing loudly.
One of them coughed, let down the window, spat, drew the window up, sat
sideways, put his legs suddenly up on the seat and groaned. The train
rattled more harshly, and shook from side to side as it got up speed.
Rain streamed down the window-panes, through which it was impossible to
see anything.

Domini still felt alert, but an overpowering sensation of dreariness had
come to her. She did not attribute this sensation to fatigue. She did
not try to analyse it. She only felt as if she had never seen or heard
anything that was not cheerless, as if she had never known anyth