Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"You have got to hear," he began at last, with perfect
self-control. "I shall say no word of love to your sister, to
whom I am betrothed from this evening, because it is you that I
love. It is you!" . . .

The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that
came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses,
freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not
restrain himself any longer. While she shrank from his approach,
her arms went out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of
her languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, and
showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that gleamed in the
purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering slowly upon
the fulness of his possession. And he perceived that she was
crying. Then the incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves,
became gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a
child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed
her fair head on his breast. He called her his star and his
little flower.

It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper's
cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Immortal Thousand, was bending
his leonine and heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the
sound of sizzling and the aroma of an artistic frittura.

In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a
cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason
survived. He was lost to the world in their embraced stillness.
But she said, whispering into his ear--

"God of mercy! What will become of me--here--now--between this
sky and this water I hate? Linda, Linda--I see her!" . . . She
tried to get out of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of
that name. But there was no one approaching their black shapes,
enlaced and struggling on the white background of the wall.
"Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die of fear before my poor
sister Linda, betrothed to-day to Giovanni--my lover! Giovanni,
you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like
other men! I will not give you up--never--only to God himself!
But why have you done this blind, mad, cruel, frightful thing?"