'Yes, it's all right,' she said softly, as if drugged, her voice
crooning and witch-like.
He walked on beside her, a striding, mindless body. But he recovered a
little as he went. He suffered badly. He had killed his brother when a
boy, and was set apart, like Cain.
They found Birkin and Ursula sitting together by the boats, talking and
laughing. Birkin had been teasing Ursula.
'Do you smell this little marsh?' he said, sniffing the air. He was
very sensitive to scents, and quick in understanding them.
'It's rather nice,' she said.
'No,' he replied, 'alarming.'
'Why alarming?' she laughed.
'It seethes and seethes, a river of darkness,' he said, 'putting forth
lilies and snakes, and the ignis fatuus, and rolling all the time
onward. That's what we never take into count--that it rolls onwards.'
'What does?'
'The other river, the black river. We always consider the silver river
of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to a brightness, on
and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal sea, a heaven of angels
thronging.
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