Page 606 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

There was something in that immobility which reached
Linda in the depths of her paradise. The elder sister guessed
angrily: the child is thinking of that wretched Ramirez. Lin-
da longed to talk. She said in her arbitrary voice, ‘Giselle!’
and was not answered by the slightest movement.
The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on
ground of her own was ready to die with terror. Not for
anything in the world would she have turned her head to
face her sister. Her heart was beating madly. She said with
subdued haste—
‘Do not speak to me. I am praying.’
Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle sat on
unbelieving, lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for the con-
firmation of the incredible. The hopeless blackness of the
clouds seemed part of a dream, too. She waited.
She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was dead
within him, creeping out of the ravine, weighted with silver,
had seen the gleam of the lighted window, and could not
help retracing his steps from the beach.
On that impenetrable background, obliterating the lofty
mountains by the seaboard, she saw the slave of the San
Tome silver, as if by an extraordinary power of a miracle.
She accepted his return as if henceforth the world could
hold no surprise for all eternity.
She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long
before the light from within fell upon the face of the ap-
proaching man.
‘You have come back to carry me off. It is well! Open thy
arms, Giovanni, my lover. I am coming.’

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