She went and crouched down in front of the window, curious.
'Oh, but this--!' she cried involuntarily, almost in pain.
In front was a valley shut in under the sky, the last huge slopes of
snow and black rock, and at the end, like the navel of the earth, a
white-folded wall, and two peaks glimmering in the late light. Straight
in front ran the cradle of silent snow, between the great slopes that
were fringed with a little roughness of pine-trees, like hair, round
the base. But the cradle of snow ran on to the eternal closing-in,
where the walls of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the mountain
peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was the centre, the knot,
the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the skies, pure,
unapproachable, impassable.
It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture. She crouched in front of the
window, clenching her face in her hands, in a sort of trance. At last
she had arrived, she had reached her place. Here at last she folded her
venture and settled down like a crystal in the navel of snow, and was
gone.
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