Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

and all his Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-lacedsleeve? He ought to have been bought off with his ownstupid weight of gold—his weight of gold, I tell you, boots,sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all.’She shook her head slightly. ‘It was impossible,’ she murmured.‘He wanted the whole lot? What?’She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window,very close and motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. Decoud,leaning his back against the wall, listened with crossedarms and lowered eyelids. He drank the tones of her evenvoice, and watched the agitated life of her throat, as if wavesof emotion had run from her heart to pass out into the air inher reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he aspiredto carry her away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamientosand reforms. All this was wrong—utterly wrong;but she fascinated him, and sometimes the sheer sagacity ofa phrase would break the charm, replace the fascination bya sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women hovered,as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected. They didnot want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stoodfor all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlinglyprofound remark, some appreciation of character, or a judgmentupon an event, bordered on the miraculous. In themature Antonia he could see with an extraordinary vividnessthe austere schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seducedhis attention; sometimes he could not restrain a murmur ofassent; now and then he advanced an objection quite seriously.Gradually they began to argue; the curtain half hid