Page 271 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

cinated, the light in them went out.
‘It is a surrender,’ I said. And I remember I was shaking
her wrists I held apart in my hands. ‘But it’s more than talk.
Your father told me to go on in God’s name.’
‘My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would make
me believe in the feasibility of anything. One look at her
face is enough to set my brain on fire. And yet I love her as
any other man would—with the heart, and with that alone.
She is more to me than his Church to Father Corbelan (the
Grand Vicar disappeared last night from the town; perhaps
gone to join the band of Hernandez). She is more to me than
his precious mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won’t
speak of his wife. She may have been sentimental once.
The San Tome mine stands now between those two people.
‘Your father himself, Antonia,’ I repeated; ‘your father, do
you understand? has told me to go on.’
‘She averted her face, and in a pained voice—
‘He has?’ she cried. ‘Then, indeed, I fear he will never
speak again.’
‘She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in
her handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather
see her miserable than not see her at all, never any more; for
whether I escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no com-
ing together, no future. And that being so, I had no pity to
waste upon the passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her
off in tears to fetch Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their
sentiment was necessary to the very life of my plan; the sen-
timentalism of the people that will never do anything for
the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to them

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