Page 596 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

her raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent
and without thought.
‘Ramirez told you he loved you?’ asked Nostromo, re-
straining himself.
‘Ah! once—one evening …’
‘The miserable … Ha!’
He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood be-
fore her mute with anger.
‘Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian’ Battista! Poor
wretch that I am!’ she lamented in ingenuous tones. ‘I told
Linda, and she scolded—she scolded. Am I to live blind,
dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told father, who took
down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you came,
and she told you.’
He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of
her white throat, which had the invincible charm of things
young, palpitating, delicate, and alive. Was this the child
he had known? Was it possible? It dawned upon him that
in these last years he had really seen very little—nothing—
of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like a thing
unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a
danger. A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce
determination that had never failed him before the perils
of this life added its steady force to the violence of his pas-
sion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the song of running
water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued—
‘And between you three you have brought me here into
this captivity to the sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and
water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre. My hair shall turn grey on