On the roads silted with black dust, the rich
light fell more warmly, more heavily, over all the amorphous squalor a
kind of magic was cast, from the glowing close of day.
'It has a foul kind of beauty, this place,' said Gudrun, evidently
suffering from fascination. 'Can't you feel in some way, a thick, hot
attraction in it? I can. And it quite stupifies me.'
They were passing between blocks of miners' dwellings. In the back
yards of several dwellings, a miner could be seen washing himself in
the open on this hot evening, naked down to the loins, his great
trousers of moleskin slipping almost away. Miners already cleaned were
sitting on their heels, with their backs near the walls, talking and
silent in pure physical well-being, tired, and taking physical rest.
Their voices sounded out with strong intonation, and the broad dialect
was curiously caressing to the blood. It seemed to envelop Gudrun in a
labourer's caress, there was in the whole atmosphere a resonance of
physical men, a glamorous thickness of labour and maleness, surcharged
in the air.
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