k; he turned away and forgot her existence.
Taminah saw Almayer standing on the shore with Nina on his arm. She
heard Nina's voice calling out gaily, and saw Dain's face brighten with
joy as he leaped on shore. She hated the sound of that voice ever since.

After that day she left off visiting Almayer's compound, and passed the
noon hours under the shade of the brig awning. She watched for his
coming with heart beating quicker and quicker, as he approached, into a
wild tumult of newly-aroused feelings of joy and hope and fear that died
away with Dain's retreating figure, leaving her tired out, as if after a
struggle, sitting still for a long time in dreamy languor. Then she
paddled home slowly in the afternoon, often letting her canoe float with
the lazy stream in the quiet backwater of the river. The paddle hung
idle in the water as she sat in the stern, one hand supporting her chin,
her eyes wide open, listening intently to the whispering of her heart
that seemed to swell at last into a song of extreme sweetness. Listening
to that song she husked the rice at home; it dulled her ears to the
shrill bickerings of Bulangi's wives, to the sound of angry reproaches
addressed to herself. And when the sun was near its setting she walked
to the bathing-place and heard it as she stood on the tender grass of the
low bank, her robe at her feet, and looked at the reflection of her
figure on the glass-like surface of the creek. Listening to it she
walked slowly back, her wet hair hanging over her shoulders; laying down
to rest under the bright stars, she closed her eyes to the murmur of the
water below, of the warm wind above; to the voice of nature speaking
through the faint noises of the great forest, and to the song of her own
heart.

She heard, but did not understand, and drank in the dreamy joy of her new
existence without troubling about its meaning or its end, till the full
consciousness of life came to her through pain and anger. And she
suffered horribly the first time she saw Nina's long canoe drift silently
past the sleeping house of Bulangi, bearing the two lovers into the white
mist of the great river. Her jealousy and rage culminated into a
paroxysm of physical pain that left her lying panting on the river bank,
in the dumb agony of a wounded animal. But she went on moving patiently
in the enchanted circle of slavery, going through her task day after day
with all the pathos of the grief she could not expres