ace had a tragic and fierce
aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some
struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a
stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an
inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step
forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of
fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The
young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back.
She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving
steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw
them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to
touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the
earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy
embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into
the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the
dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.

"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to
shoot her,' said the man of patches, nervously. 'I had been risking my
life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She
got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked
up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At least
it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour,
pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this
tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or
there would have been mischief. I don't understand. . . . No--it's too
much for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.'

"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save
me!--save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save _me!_ Why, I've had
to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick
as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out
yet--I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little
peddling notions--you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . .'

"The manager came out. He did me the honor to take me under the arm and
lead me aside. 'He is very low, very low,' he said. He considered it
necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We have
done all we could for him--haven't we?