ATDTDA (20): Hurled into the East, 567

[Paul Nightingale]

Another departure by train, Kit "glimps[ing] how Ostend really might not be
simply another pleasure-resort for people with too much money ..." etc. He
has another dream of sorts, a vision of "a continental system ..." etc, at
which point the narration is distanced from him: "Not yet aware of how
familiar ..." etc. At the end of the previous section Kit and Umeki have
each been struck by the necessity of their actions, in particular departure
(bottom of 566). Now, he seeks her "even among subsets that would not
possibly include her" (567); as though her absence is a kind of presence. By
the end of the section, and indeed chapter, he has gone without warning from
the station ("the crowds on the platform") to sitting on a moving train
designed to take him into the future invoked above. Her absence on/from the
platform is matched, retrospectively, by his own.