Page 603 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

The rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had
taken from the rich nothing —nothing that was not lost to
them already by their folly and their betrayal. For he had
been betrayed—he said—deceived, tempted. She believed
him…. He had kept the treasure for purposes of revenge;
but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He
would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with ol-
ive trees—a white palace above a blue sea. He would keep
her there like a jewel in a casket. He would get land for her—
her own land fertile with vines and corn—to set her little
feet upon. He kissed them…. He had already paid for it all
with the soul of a woman and the life of a man…. The Ca-
pataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her
feet in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the dark-
ness defying—as men said—the knowledge of God and the
wit of the devil. But she must let him grow rich first—he
warned her.
She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his
hair. He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as
though he had flung his soul away.
‘Make haste, then,’ she said. ‘Make haste, Giovanni, my
lover, my master, for I will give thee up to no one but God.
And I am afraid of Linda.’
He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He
trusted the courage of her love. She promised to be brave in
order to be loved always—far away in a white palace upon a
hill above a blue sea. Then with a timid, tentative eagerness
she murmured—

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard