Rain streamed down the window-panes, through which it was impossible to
see anything.

Domini still felt alert, but an overpowering sensation of dreariness had
come to her. She did not attribute this sensation to fatigue. She did
not try to analyse it. She only felt as if she had never seen or heard
anything that was not cheerless, as if she had never known anything 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