[The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf]@TWC D-Link book
The Voyage Out

CHAPTER IX
20/45

Until all people should awake again the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags, and the elephants coming down in the darkness to drink at pools.

The wind at night blowing over the hills and woods was purer and fresher than the wind by day, and the earth, robbed of detail, more mysterious than the earth coloured and divided by roads and fields.

For six hours this profound beauty existed, and then as the east grew whiter and whiter the ground swam to the surface, the roads were revealed, the smoke rose and the people stirred, and the sun shone upon the windows of the hotel at Santa Marina until they were uncurtained, and the gong blaring all through the house gave notice of breakfast.
Directly breakfast was over, the ladies as usual circled vaguely, picking up papers and putting them down again, about the hall.
"And what are you going to do to-day ?" asked Mrs.Elliot drifting up against Miss Warrington.
Mrs.Elliot, the wife of Hughling the Oxford Don, was a short woman, whose expression was habitually plaintive.

Her eyes moved from thing to thing as though they never found anything sufficiently pleasant to rest upon for any length of time.
"I'm going to try to get Aunt Emma out into the town," said Susan.
"She's not seen a thing yet." "I call it so spirited of her at her age," said Mrs.Elliot, "coming all this way from her own fireside." "Yes, we always tell her she'll die on board ship," Susan replied.

"She was born on one," she added.
"In the old days," said Mrs.Elliot, "a great many people were.


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