Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN (continued)

This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must take her away
soon--the very next time he came. She would not suffer these
terrors for ever so much silver. To speak with her sister made
her ill. But she was not uneasy at her father's watchfulness. She
had begged Nostromo not to come to the window that night. He had
promised to keep away for this once. And she did not know, could
not guess or imagine, that he had another reason for coming on
the island.

Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to light up.
She unlocked the little door, and went heavily up the spiral
staircase, carrying her love for the magnificent Capataz de
Cargadores like an ever-increasing load of shameful fetters. No;
she could not throw it off. No; let Heaven dispose of these two.
And moving about the lantern, filled with twilight and the sheen
of the moon, with careful movements she lighted the lamp. Then
her arms fell along her body.

"And with our mother looking on," she murmured. "My own
sister--the Chica!"

The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings and rings
of prisms, glittered and sparkled like a domeshaped shrine of
diamonds, containing not a lamp, but some sacred flame,
dominating the sea. And Linda, the keeper, in black, with a pale
face, drooped low in a wooden chair, alone with her jealousy, far
above the shames and passions of the earth. A strange, dragging
pain as if somebody were pulling her about brutally by her dark
hair with bronze glints, made her put her hands up to her
temples. They would meet. They would meet. And she knew where,
too. At the window. The sweat of torture fell in drops on her
cheeks, while the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a
colossal bar of silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf--the
sombre cavern of clouds and stillness in the surf-fretted
seaboard.

Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip. He loved
neither her nor her sister. The whole thing seemed so objectless
as to frighten her, and also give her some hope. Why did he not
carry her off? What prevented him? He was incomprehensible. What
were they waiting for? For what end were these two lying and
deceiving? Not for the ends of their love. There was no such
thing. The hope of regaining him for herself made her break her
vow of not leaving the tower that night. She must talk at once to
her father, who was wise, and would understand. She ran down the
spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at the bottom
she heard the sound of the first shot ever fired on the Great
Isabel.