und similarities of nature, which must
exist for complete confidence and understanding, no matter what
outward differences of temperament there may be to exercise their own
fascination of contrast. His wife would have to know his secret or else
life would be impossible. He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid
gaze and white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under her
quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, passionately pale
face, energetic, all fire and words, touched with gloom and scorn, a
chip of the old block, true daughter of the austere republican, but with
Teresa's voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust. Moreover, the
poor girl could not conceal her love for Gian' Battista. He could see it
would be violent, exacting, suspicious, uncompromising--like her soul.
Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface placidity of her
nature holding a promise of submissiveness, by the charm of her girlish
mysteriousness, excited his passion and allayed his fears as to the
future.

His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning from the longest of
them, he made out lighters loaded with blocks of stone lying under
the cliff of the Great Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen's
figures moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising from its
foundations on the edge of the cliff.

At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he thought himself
lost irretrievably. What could save him from detection now? Nothing! He
was struck with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would kindle
a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of his life; that life
whose very essence, value, reality, consisted in its reflection from the
admiring eyes of men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
comprehension; which stood between him and the power that hears and
gives effect to the evil intention of curses. It was dark. Not every man
had such a darkness. And they were going to put a light there. A light!
He saw it shining upon disgrace, poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure
to. . . . Perhaps somebody had already. . . .

The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected and feared Captain
Fidanza, the unquestioned patron of secret societies, a republican like
old Giorgio, and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), was
on the point of jumping overboard from the deck of his own schooner.
That man, subjective almost to insanity, looked suicide deliberately in
th