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Helmsley looked quickly from one to the other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through his fuzzy grey-white beard, for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth dissecting. "But, doctor " he began. Mr. Bunce raised a hand.
The subdued light, the absence of shadows, the massive shafts, springing grey-white out of the jetlike ground, the fantastic trees, the absence of a sky, the deathly silence, the knowledge that he was underground the combination of all these things predisposed Maskull's mind to mysticism, and he prepared himself with some anxiety to hear Corpang's explanation of the land and its wonders.
Huge mountain-walls, towering to immense heights and enclosing great circular and oval plains, one side of them blazing with intolerable light, and the other side black with impenetrable obscurity; enormous valleys reaching down from brilliant day into rayless night perhaps down into the very bowels of the dead world itself; vast grey-white plains lying round the mountains, crossed by little ridges and by long black lines, which could only be immense fissures with perpendicular sides but all hard, grey-white and black, all intolerable brightness or inky gloom; not a sign of life anywhere; no shady forests, no green fields, no broad, glittering oceans; only a ghastly wilderness of dead mountains and dead plains.
Up here, there were not even those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked. No life! Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we, too, must pass. Never more to love, nor to be loved! One could but turn to the earth, and press one's face to it, away from the wild loveliness.
Surely the trees were growing more closely together than they had seemed to do; their tall grey-white trunks repeated themselves in a most bewildering way, and right in her path lay a fallen giant which she was perfectly certain she had not passed before. "Bother! I have come the wrong way," she said, turning round and retracing her steps.
The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in the centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog. And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth for worms, were silent quite.
Little Jon got up, jumped one of them, and walked round the clump of iris plants which filled the pool of grey-white marble in the centre. The flowers were pretty, but only smelled a very little. He stood in the open doorway and looked out. Suppose! suppose they didn't come!
Up here, there were not even those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked. No life! Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we, too, must pass. Never more to love, nor to be loved! One could but turn to the earth, and press one's face to it, away from the wild loveliness.
What matter though she did not skate! It was easily learned. Madeleine had been a beginner that winter, and now seldom missed an afternoon. "Oh, if Madeleine is there, I should not go," she said with a touch of the old arrogance. Then he told her of the frozen river, with its long, lonely, grey-white reaches. Her eyes kindled at this, he fancied, and in her answer was more of herself.
A lull followed, and I twisted my neck all round the compass, for, in the presence of hostile aeroplanes, Archie seldom behaves, except when friendly machines are about. Two thousand feet below three biplanes were approaching the wood from the south. Black crosses showed up plainly on their grey-white wings. We dropped into a dive toward the strangers.
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