Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"They say you love Ramirez."

She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled
to and fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead
had the soft, pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of
the sunset, mingling the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of
the sea, and the crimson of the sky in a magnificent stillness.

"No," she said, slowly. "I never loved him. I think I never . . .
He loves me--perhaps."

The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, and her
raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if indifferent and
without thought.

"Ramirez told you he loved you?" asked Nostromo, restraining
himself.

"Ah! once--one evening . . ."

"The miserable . . . Ha!"

He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her
mute with anger.

"Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian' Battista! Poor wretch that
I am!" she lamented in ingenuous tones. "I told Linda, and she
scolded--she scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this
world? And she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it.
Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you."

He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her
white throat, which had the invincible charm of things young,
palpitating, delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had
known? Was it possible? It dawned upon him that in these last
years he had really seen very little--nothing--of her. Nothing.
She had come into the world like a thing unknown. She had come
upon him unawares. She was a danger. A frightful danger. The
instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed
him before the perils of this life added its steady force to the
violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the
song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued--