tiny house with a peaked roof, a wooden railing dividing the platform
from the country road, mud, grass bending beneath the weight of
water-drops, and tall, dripping, shaggy eucalyptus trees. Sometimes the
station-master's children peered at the train with curious eyes, and
depressed-looking Arabs, carefully wrapped up, their mouths and chins
covered by folds of linen, got in and out slowly.

Once Domini saw two women, in thin, floating white dresses and spangled
veils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy silver ornaments
jangled on their ankles, above their black slippers splashed with mud.
Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained,
claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their
light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted
by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left
side of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey woollen
jacket. He pushed the two women into the train as if he were pushing
bales, and got in after them, showing enormous bare legs, with calves
that stuck out like lumps of iron.

The darkness began to fade, and presently, as the grey light grew slowly
stronger, the rain ceased, and it was possible to see through the glass
of the carriage window.

The country began to discover itself, as if timidly, to Domini's eyes.
She had recently noticed that the train was going very slowly, and she
could now see why. They were mounting a steep incline. The rich, damp
earth of the plains beyond Robertville, with its rank grass, its moist
ploughland and groves of eucalyptus, was already left behind. The train
was crawling in a cup of the hills, grey, sterile and abandoned,
without roads or houses, without a single tree. Small, grey-green bushes