Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 12. CHAPTER TWELVE (continued)

She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a
sleep-walker in a beatific dream.

Nostromo made a superhuman effort. "It is time, Linda, we two
were betrothed," he said, steadily, in his level, careless,
unbending tone.

She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark
with bronze glints, upon which her father's hand rested for a
moment.

"And so the soul of the dead is satisfied."

This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of
his dead wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked
at each other. Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless,
began to speak.

"Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you
alone, Gian' Battista. And that you knew! You knew it . . .
Battistino."

She pronounced the name exactly with her mother's intonation. A
gloom as of the grave covered Nostromo's heart.

"Yes. I knew," he said.

The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary
head, his old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and
violent, terrible and dreary--solitary on the earth full of men.

And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, "I was yours ever
since I can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to
become empty to my eyes. When you were there, I could see no one
else. I was yours. Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you,
and you let me live in it." . . . She dropped her low, vibrating
voice to a still lower note, and found other things to
say--torturing for the man at her side. Her murmur ran on ardent
and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister, who came out
with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and passed
in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.