Page 628 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

‘You have killed Gian’ Battista.’
The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women
had strange fancies.
‘Where is the child?’ he asked, surprised at the penetrat-
ing chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness of the
lamp by which he used to sit up half the night with the open
Bible before him.
Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
‘She is asleep,’ she said. ‘We shall talk of her tomorrow.’
She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with ter-
ror and with an almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had
observed the change that came over him. He would never
understand what he had done; and even to her the whole
thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty—
‘Give me the book.’
Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn
leather cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an English-
man in Palermo.
‘The child had to be protected,’ he said, in a strange,
mournful voice.
Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying with-
out noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He heard her
move.
‘Where are you going? ‘he asked.
‘To the light,’ she answered, turning round to look at him
balefully.
‘The light! Si—duty.’
Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his ab-
sorbed quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for