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

eathed her ambient seduction in the tumultuous heavingof his breast. Before leaving the harbour he had thrown offthe store clothing of Captain Fidanza, for greater ease in thelong pull out to the islands. He stood before her in the redsash and check shirt as he used to appear on the Company’swharf—a Mediterranean sailor come ashore to try hisluck in Costaguana. The dusk of purple and red envelopedhim, too—close, soft, profound, as no more than fifty yardsfrom that spot it had gathered evening after evening aboutthe self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud’s utterscepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.‘You have got to hear,’ he began at last, with perfect selfcontrol.‘I shall say no word of love to your sister, to whomI am betrothed from this evening, because it is you that Ilove. It is you!’ …The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smilethat came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love andkisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. Hecould not restrain himself any longer. While she shrankfrom his approach, her arms went out to him, abandonedand regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He heldher head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses uponthe upturned face that gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterfuland tender, he was entering slowly upon the fulness ofhis possession. And he perceived that she was crying. Thenthe incomparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, becamegentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of achild. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by her andnursed her fair head on his breast. He called her his star and