strange intensity. Then she made a movement forward,
but he lifted his finger, and she restrained herself with a long sigh.
He calmed down suddenly and surveyed her with cold criticism, with the
same appearance as when, in the old days, he used to find fault with the
household expenses. She found a kind of fearful delight in this abrupt
return into the past, into her old subjection.

He stood outwardly collected now, and listened to her disconnected
story. Her words seemed to fall round him with the distracting clatter
of stunning hail. He caught the meaning here and there, and straightway
would lose himself in a tremendous effort to shape out some intelligible
theory of events. There was a boat. A boat. A big boat that could take
him to sea if necessary. That much was clear. She brought it. Why did
Almayer lie to her so? Was it a plan to decoy him into some ambush?
Better that than hopeless solitude. She had money. The men were ready to
go anywhere . . . she said.

He interrupted her--

"Where are they now?"

"They are coming directly," she answered, tearfully. "Directly. There
are some fishing stakes near here--they said. They are coming directly."

Again she was talking and sobbing together. She wanted to be forgiven.
Forgiven? What for? Ah! the scene in Macassar. As if he had time to
think of that! What did he care what she had done months ago? He seemed
to struggle in the toils of complicated dreams where everything was
impossible, yet a matter of course, where the past took the aspects of
the future and the present lay heavy on his heart--seemed to take him by
the throat like the hand of an enemy. And while she begged, entreated,
kissed his hands, wept on his shoulder, adjured him in the name of God,
to forgive, to forget, to speak the word for which she longed, to look
at his boy, to believe in her sorrow and in her devotion--his eyes, in
the fascinated immobility of shining pupils, looked far away, far beyond
her, beyond the river, beyond this land, through days, weeks, months;
looked into liberty, into the future, into his triumph . . . into the
great possibility of a startling revenge.

He felt a sudden desire to dance and shout. He shouted--

"After all, we shall meet again, Captain Lingard."

"Oh, no! No!" she cried, joining her hands.

He looked at her with surprise. He had forgotten she was there till the
break of her cry in the monotonous tones of her prayer recalled him
into that courtyard from