Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"I tell you I am afraid of Linda!" And still he did not move. She
became quiet and wily. "What can there be?" she asked, coaxingly.

He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of
his arm. In the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the
triumphant excitement of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.

"A treasure," he said. All was still. She did not understand. "A
treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow."

"A treasure?" she repeated in a faint voice, as if from the
depths of a dream. "What is it you say?"

She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her,
aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her
cheeks--seeing the fascination of her person in the night of the
gulf as if in the blaze of noonday. Her nonchalant and seductive
voice trembled with the excitement of admiring awe and
ungovernable curiosity.

"A treasure of silver!" she stammered out. Then pressed on
faster: "What? Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?"

He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a
heroic blow that he burst out--

"Like a thief!"

The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his
head. He could not see her now. She had vanished into a long,
obscure abysmal silence, whence her voice came back to him after
a time with a faint glimmer, which was her face.

"I love you! I love you!"