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

and the triumphant excitement of his mind, he struck outfor 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 thybrow.’‘A treasure?’ she repeated in a faint voice, as if from thedepths of a dream. ‘What is it you say?’She disengaged herself gently. He got up and lookeddown at her, aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimpleson her cheeks—seeing the fascination of her person inthe night of the gulf as if in the blaze of noonday. Her nonchalantand seductive voice trembled with the excitement ofadmiring awe and ungovernable curiosity.‘A treasure of silver!’ she stammered out. Then pressed onfaster: ‘What? Where? How did you get it, Giovanni?’He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if strikinga heroic blow that he burst out—‘Like a thief!’The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fallupon his head. He could not see her now. She had vanishedinto a long, obscure abysmal silence, whence her voice cameback to him after a time with a faint glimmer, which washer face.‘I love you! I love you!’These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom;they cast a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure;they changed his weary subjection to that dead thinginto an exulting conviction of his power. He would cherishher, he said, in a splendour as great as Dona Emilia’s.