to the right nor to the left but at the face only,
as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and
dreaded; that white-haired, rough and severe head upon which he gazed in
a fixed effort of his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at
the full range of human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the
planks, the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his
footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the cloudy
sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the earth oppressed
by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of the world collecting its
faculties to withstand the storm. Through this silence Willems pushed
his way, and stopped about six feet from Lingard. He stopped simply
because he could go no further. He had started from the door with the
reckless purpose of clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. He had
no idea that the man would turn out to be so tall, so big and so
unapproachable. It seemed to him that he had never, never in his life,
seen Lingard.

He tried to say--

"Do not believe . . ."

A fit of coughing checked his sentence in a faint splutter. Directly
afterwards he swallowed--as it were--a couple of pebbles, throwing his
chin up in the act; and Lingard, who looked at him narrowly, saw a bone,
sharp and triangular like the head of a snake, dart up and down twice
under the skin of his throat. Then that, too, did not move. Nothing
moved.

"Well," said Lingard, and with that word he came unexpectedly to the end
of his speech. His hand in his pocket closed firmly round the butt of
his revolver bulging his jacket on the hip, and he thought how soon and
how quickly he could terminate his quarrel with that man who had been so
anxious to deliver himself into his hands--and how inadequate would be
that ending! He could not bear the idea of that man escaping from him by
going out of life; escaping from fear, from doubt, from remorse into the
peaceful certitude of death. He held him now. And he was not going to
let him go--to let him disappear for ever in the faint blue smoke of a
pistol shot. His anger grew within him. He felt a touch as of a burning
hand on his heart. Not on the flesh of his breast, but a touch on his
heart itself, on the palpitating and untiring particle of matter that
responds to every emotion of the soul; that leaps with joy, with terror,
or with anger.

He drew a long breath. He could see before him the bare ches