Page 598 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

‘Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You
…’
‘Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,’ she said,
unmoved. ‘Who is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?’
she repeated, dreamily, in the dusk and gloom of the cloud-
ed gulf, with a low red streak in the west like a hot bar of
glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a
cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had
hidden his conquests of love and wealth.
‘Listen, Giselle,’ he said, in measured tones; ‘I will tell no
word of love to your sister. Do you want to know why?’
‘Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father
says you are not like other men; that no one had ever un-
derstood you properly; that the rich will be surprised yet….
Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary.’
She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of
her face, then let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded
on the land side, but slanting away from the dark column of
the lighthouse they could see the long shaft of light, kindled
by Linda, go out to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of
purple and red.
Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the
house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stock-
ings and black slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to
surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, to the gathering dusk.
The charm of her body, the promising mysteriousness of her
indolence, went out into the night of the Placid Gulf like a
fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shad-
ows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo