SUN BY D. H. LAWRENCE E. ARCHER 68, RED LION STREET, LONDON, W.C.1. _September_, 1926. CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V SUN I "Take her away, into the sun," the doctors said. She herself was sceptical of the sun, but she permitted herself to be carried away, with her child, and a nurse, and her mother, over the sea. The ship sailed at midnight. And for two hours her husband stayed with her, while the child was put to bed, and the passengers came on board. It was a black night, the Hudson swayed with heavy blackness, shaken over with spilled dribbles of light. She leaned on the rail, and looking down thought: This is the sea; it is deeper than one imagines, and fuller of memories. At that moment the sea seemed to heave like the serpent of chaos that has lived for ever. "These partings are no good, you know," her husband was saying, at her side. "They're no good. I don't like them." His tone was full of apprehension, misgiving, and there was a certain note of clinging to the last straw of hope. "No, neither do I," she responded in a flat voice. She remembered how bitterly they had wanted to get away from one another, he and she. The emotion of parting gave a slight tug at her emotions, but only caused the iron that had gone into her soul to gore deeper. So, they looked at their sleeping son, and the father's eyes were wet. But it is not the wetting of the eyes which counts, it is the deep iron rhythm of habit, the year-long, life-long habits; the deep-set stroke of power. And in their two lives, the stroke of power was hostile, his and hers. Like two engines running at variance, they shattered one another. "All ashore! All ashore!" "Maurice, you must go!" And she thought to herself: For him it is _All ashore_! For me it is _Out to sea_! Well, he waved his hanky on the midnight dreariness of the pier, as the boat inched away; one among a crowd. One among a crowd! _C'est ça_! The ferry-boats, like great dishes piled with rows of lights, were still slanting across the Hudson. That black mouth must be the Lackawanna Station. The ship ebbed on, the Hudson seemed interminable. But at last they were round the bend, and there was the poor harvest of lights, at the Battery. Liberty flung up her torch in a tantrum. There was the wash of the sea. And though the Atlantic was grey as lava, she did come at last into the sun. Even she had a house above the bluest of seas, with a vast garden, or vineyard, all vines and olives dropping steeply, terrace after terrace, to the strip of coast-plain; and the garden full of secret places, deep groves of lemon far down in the cleft of earth, and hidden, pure green reservoirs of water; then a spring issuing out of a little cavern, where the old Sicules had drunk before the Greeks came; and a grey goat bleating, stabled in an ancient tomb, with all the niches empty. There was the scent of mimosa, and beyond, the snow of the volcano.