ing that
was not either sad, or odd, or inexplicable. What did she remember? A
train of trifles that seemed to have been enough to fill all her life;
the arrival of the nervous and badly-dressed recruits at the wharf,
their embarkation, their last staring and pathetic look at France,
the stormy voyage, the sordid illness of almost everyone on board, the
approach long after sundown to the small and unknown town, of which it
was impossible to see anything clearly, the marshalling of the recruits
pale with sickness, their pitiful attempt at cheerful singing, angrily
checked by the Zouaves in charge of them, their departure up the hill
carrying their poor belongings, the sleepless night, the sound of the
rain falling, the scents rising from the unseen earth. The tap of the
Italian waiter at the door, the damp drive to the station, the long wait
there, the sneering signal, followed by the piping horn, the jerking and
rattling of the carriage, the dim light within it falling upon the stout
Frenchman in his mourning, the streaming water upon the window-panes.
These few sights, sounds, sensations were like the story of a life to
Domini just then, were more, were like the whole of life; always
dull noise, strange, flitting, pale faces, and an unknown region
that remained perpeturally invisible, and that must surely be ugly or
terrible.

The train stopped frequently at lonely little stations. Domini looked
out, letting down the window for a moment. At each station she saw a
tiny house with a peaked roof, a wooden railing dividing the platform
from the country road, mud, grass bending beneath the weight of
water-drops, and tall, dripping, shaggy eucalyptus trees. Sometimes the
station-master's children peered at the train with curious eyes, and
depressed-looking Arabs, carefully wrapped up, their mouths and chins
covered by folds of linen, got in and out slowly.

Once Domini saw two women, in thin, floating white dresses and spangled
veils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy silver ornaments
jangled on their ankles, above their black slippers splashed with mud.
Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained,
claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their
light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted
by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left
side of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey woollen
jacket. He pus