Miners already cleaned were sitting on their heels, with their backs near the walls, talking and silent in pure physical well-being, tired, and taking physical rest.
Their voices sounded out with strong intonation, and the broad dialect was curiously caressing to the blood.

It seemed to envelop Gudrun in a labourer's caress, there was in the whole atmosphere a resonance of physical men, a glamorous thickness of labour and maleness, surcharged in the air.

But it was universal in the district, and therefore unnoticed by the inhabitants.
To Gudrun, however, it was potent and half-repulsive.

She could never tell why Beldover was so utterly different from London and the south, why one's whole feelings were different, why one seemed to live in another sphere.

Now she realised that this was the world of powerful, underworld men who spent most of their time in the darkness.