ill come to the window when it's dark," he
said.

"No, don't, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and father have been talking
together for a long time today."

"What about?"

"Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am always
afraid. It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love is to me like
your treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough of it."

He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had grown
within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable of sustained
emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at
night. When she saw him she flamed up always. Then only an increased
taciturnity marked the change in her. She was afraid of betraying
herself. She was afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of
facing anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light and tender
with a pagan sincerity in its impulses. She murmured--

"Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills, for which
we are starving our love."

She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the house.

Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was amazed at
her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish
in her face.

"Have you been ill?" he asked, trying to put some concern into this
question.

Her black eyes blazed at him. "Am I thinner?" she asked.

"Yes--perhaps--a little."

"And older?"

"Every day counts--for all of us."

"I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger," she said,
slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.

She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turned-up sleeves.

"No fear of that," he said, absently.

She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied herself
with household cares while Nostromo talked with her father. Conversation
with the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties
unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within
him. His answers were slow in coming, with an effect of august gravity.
But that day he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more
life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the integrity of his honour.
He believed Sidoni's warning as to Ramirez's designs upon his younger
daughter. And he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing of
his cares to "Son Gian' Battista." It was a touch of senile vanity. He
wanted to show that he was equal yet to the task o