down from amongst the boughs and mingled with the black hair that
framed her face, as if all those plants claimed her for their

own--the animated and brilliant flower of all that exuberant life
which, born in gloom, struggles for ever towards the sunshine.

Every day she came a little nearer. He watched her slow
progress--the gradual taming of that woman by the words of his

love. It was the monotonous song of praise and desire that,
commencing at creation, wraps up the world like an atmosphere and

shall end only in the end of all things--when there are no lips
to sing and no ears to hear. He told her that she was beautiful

and desirable, and he repeated it again and again; for when he
told her that, he had said all there was within him--he had

expressed his only thought, his only feeling. And he watched the
startled look of wonder and mistrustvanish from her face with

the passing days, her eyes soften, the smile dwell longer and
longer on her lips; a smile as of one charmed by a delightful

dream; with the slight exaltation of intoxicating triumph lurking
in its dawning tenderness.

And while she was near there was nothing in the whole world--for
that idle man--but her look and her smile. Nothing in the past,

nothing in the future; and in the present only the luminous fact
of her existence. But in the sudden darkness of her going he

would be left weak and helpless, as though despoiled violently of
all that was himself. He who had lived all his life with no

preoccupation but that of his own career, contemptuously
indifferent to all feminine influence, full of scorn for men that

would submit to it, if ever so little; he, so strong, so superior
even in his errors, realized at last that his very individuality

was snatched from within himself by the hand of a woman. Where
was the assurance and pride of his cleverness; the belief in

success, the anger of failure, the wish to retrieve his fortune,
the certitude of his ability to accomplish it yet? Gone. All

gone. All that had been a man within him was gone, and there
remained only the trouble of his heart--that heart which had

become a contemptible thing; which could be fluttered by a look
or a smile, tormented by a word, soothed by a promise.

When the longed-for day came at last, when she sank on the grass
by his side and with a quick gesture took his hand in hers, he

sat up suddenly with the movement and look of a man awakened by
the crash of his own falling house. All his blood, all his

sensation, all his life seemed to rush into that hand leaving him
without strength, in a cold shiver, in the sudden clamminess and

collapse as of a deadly gun-shot wound. He flung her hand away
brutally, like something burning, and sat motionless" target="_blank" title="a.静止的；固定的">motionless, his head

fallen forward, staring on the ground and catching his breath in
painful gasps. His impulse of fear and apparenthorror did not

dismay her in the least. Her face was grave and her eyes looked
seriously at him. Her fingers touched the hair of his temple,

ran in a light caress down his cheek, twisted gently the end of
his long moustache: and while he sat in the tremor of that

contact she ran off with startling fleetness and disappeared in a
peal of clear laughter, in the stir of grass, in the nod of young

twigs growing over the path; leaving behind only a vanishing
trail of motion and sound.

He scrambled to his feet slowly and painfully, like a man with a
burden on his shoulders, and walked towards the riverside. He

hugged to his breast the recollection of his fear and of his
delight, but told himself seriously over and over again that this

must be the end of that adventure. After shoving off his canoe
into the stream he lifted his eyes to the bank and gazed at it

long and steadily, as if taking his last look at a place of
charming memories. He marched up to Almayer's house with the

concentrated expression and the determined step of a man who had
just taken a momentous resolution. His face was set and rigid,

his gestures and movements were guarded and slow. He was keeping
a tight hand on himself. A very tight hand. He had a vivid

illusion--as vivid as reality almost--of being in charge of a
slippery prisoner. He sat opposite Almayer during that

dinner--which was their last meal together--with a perfectly calm
face and within him a growing terror of escape from his own self.

Now and then he would grasp the edge of the table and set his
teeth hard in a sudden wave of acute despair, like one who,

falling down a smooth and rapid declivity that ends in a
precipice, digs his finger nails into the yielding surface and

feels himself slipping helplessly to inevitable destruction.
Then, abruptly, came a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way

of his will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that
wish, that idea kept back during all those hours, darted into his

brain with the heat and noise of a conflagration. He must see
her! See her at once! Go now! To-night! He had the raging

regret of the lost hour, of every passing moment. There was no
thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive fear of the

irrevocable, with the innate falseness of the human heart, he
wanted to keep open the way of retreat. He had never absented

himself during the night. What did Almayer know? What would
Almayer think? Better ask him for the gun. A moonlight night. .

. . Look for deer. . . . A colourable pretext. He would lie to
Almayer. What did it matter! He lied to himself every minute of

his life. And for what? For a woman. And such. . . .
Almayer's answer showed him that deception was useless.

Everything gets to be known, even in this place. Well, he did
not care. Cared for nothing but for the lost seconds. What if

he should suddenly die. Die before he saw her. Before he could .
. .

As, with the sound of Almayer's laughter in his ears, he urged
his canoe in a slanting course across the rapid current, he tried

to tell himself that he could return at any moment. He would
just go and look at the place where they used to meet, at the

tree under which he lay when she took his hand, at the spot where
she sat by his side. Just go there and then return--nothing

more; but when his little skiff touched the bank he leaped out,
forgetting the painter, and the canoe hung for a moment amongst

the bushes and then swung out of sight before he had time to dash
into the water and secure it. He was thunderstruck at first.

Now
he could not go back unless he called up the Rajah's people to

get a boat and rowers--and the way to Patalolo's campong led past
Aissa's house!

He went up the path with the eager eyes and reluctant steps of a
man pursuing a phantom, and when he found himself at a place

where a narrow track branched off to the left towards Omar's
clearing he stood still, with a look of strained attention on his

face as if listening to a far-off voice--the voice of his fate.
It was a sound inarticulate but full of meaning; and following it

there came a rending and tearing within his breast. He twisted
his fingers together, and the joints of his hands and arms

cracked. On his forehead the perspiration stood out in small
pearly drops. He looked round wildly. Above the shapeless

darkness of the forest undergrowth rose the treetops with their
high boughs and leaves standing out black on the pale sky--like

fragments of night floating on moonbeams. Under his feet warm
steam rose from the heated earth. Round him there was a great

silence.
He was looking round for help. This silence, this immobility of

his surroundings seemed to him a cold rebuke, a stern refusal, a
cruel unconcern. There was no safety outside of himself--and in

himself there was no refuge; there was only the image of that
woman. He had a sudden moment of lucidity--of that cruel lucidity

that comes once in life to the most benighted. He seemed to see
what went on within him, and was horrified at the strange sight.

He, a white man whose worst fault till then had been a little
want of judgment and too much confidence in the rectitude of his

kind! That woman was a complete savage, and . . . He tried to
tell himself that the thing was of no consequence. It was a vain

effort. The novelty of the sensations he had never experienced
before in the slightest degree, yet had despised on hearsay from

his safe position of a civilized man, destroyed his courage. He