in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all
over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more
self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even
a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added,
impetuously--

"Your little feet!"

Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to
bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes
glanced at her little feet.

"And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah!
now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She
will not be so fierce."

"Chica!" said Nostromo, "I have not told her anything."

"Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have
some peace from her scolding and--perhaps--who knows . . ."

"Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . ."

"Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni," she said, unmoved. "Who
is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?" she repeated, dreamily, in
the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the
west like a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world
sombre as a cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had
hidden his conquests of love and wealth.

"Listen, Giselle," he said, in measured tones; "I will tell no word of
love to your sister. Do you want to know why?"

"Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not
like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the
rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary."

She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower part of her face, then
let it fall on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but
slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the
long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring
glow in a horizon of purple and red.

Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house,
her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black
slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil
and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising
mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid
Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the
shadows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed
her ambient seduction in th