rness and love for his
daughter. He wanted to see her miserable, and to share with her his
despair; but he wanted it only as all weak natures long for a
companionship in misfortune with beings innocent of its cause. If she
suffered herself she would understand and pity him; but now she would
not, or could not, find one word of comfort or love for him in his dire
extremity. The sense of his absolute loneliness came home to his heart
with a force that made him shudder. He swayed and fell forward with his
face on the table, his arms stretched straight out, extended and rigid.
Nina made a quick movement towards her father and stood looking at the
grey head, on the broad shoulders shaken convulsively by the violence of
feelings that found relief at last in sobs and tears.

Nina sighed deeply and moved away from the table. Her features lost the
appearance of stony indifference that had exasperated her father into his
outburst of anger and sorrow. The expression of her face, now unseen by
her father, underwent a rapid change. She had listened to Almayer's
appeal for sympathy, for one word of comfort, apparently indifferent, yet
with her breast torn by conflicting impulses raised unexpectedly by
events she had not foreseen, or at least did not expect to happen so
soon. With her heart deeply moved by the sight of Almayer's misery,
knowing it in her power to end it with a word, longing to bring peace to
that troubled heart, she heard with terror the voice of her overpowering
love commanding her to be silent. And she submitted after a short and
fierce struggle of her old self against the new principle of her life.
She wrapped herself up in absolute silence, the only safeguard against
some fatal admission. She could not trust herself to make a sign, to
murmur a word for fear of saying too much; and the very violence of the
feelings that stirred the innermost recesses of her soul seemed to turn
her person into a stone. The dilated nostrils and the flashing eyes were
the only signs of the storm raging within, and those signs of his
daughter's emotion Almayer did not see, for his sight was dimmed by self-
pity, by anger, and by despair.

Had Almayer looked at his daughter as she leant over the front rail of
the verandah he could have seen the expression of indifference give way
to a look of pain, and that again pass away, leaving the glorious beauty
of her face marred by deep-drawn lines of watchful anxiety. The long
gras