Page 208 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your
time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die.’
His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his pres-
ence she stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan
hanging down from her interlaced fingers. He waited for a
while, and then—
‘I shall go to the wall,’ he said, with a sort of jocular des-
peration.
Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her
head remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the
Avellanos, whose chipped pilasters, broken cornices, the
whole degradation of dignity was hidden now by the gath-
ering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips alone
moved, forming the words—
‘Martin, you will make me cry.’
He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if over-
whelmed by a sort of awed happiness, with the lines of the
mocking smile still stiffened about his mouth, and incredu-
lous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sentence is in the
personality which utters it, for nothing new can be said by
man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to
him, that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had
never made it up with her so completely in all their inter-
course of small encounters; but even before she had time to
turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace,
he had begun to plead—
‘My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is
transported with joy. I won’t say anything of my mother!
Our mothers were like sisters. There is the mail-boat for the

0