ds
the settlement, "my voice could wake up men that would lead the Orang
Blanda soldiers to him who is waiting--for you."

She could not see her daughter's face, but the white figure before her
stood silent and irresolute in the darkness. Mrs. Almayer pursued her
advantage.

"Give up your old life! Forget!" she said in entreating tones. "Forget
that you ever looked at a white face; forget their words; forget their
thoughts. They speak lies. And they think lies because they despise us
that are better than they are, but not so strong. Forget their
friendship and their contempt; forget their many gods. Girl, why do you
want to remember the past when there is a warrior and a chief ready to
give many lives--his own life--for one of your smiles?"

While she spoke she pushed gently her daughter towards the canoes, hiding
her own fear, anxiety, and doubt under the flood of passionate words that
left Nina no time to think and no opportunity to protest, even if she had
wished it. But she did not wish it now. At the bottom of that passing
desire to look again at her father's face there was no strong affection.
She felt no scruples and no remorse at leaving suddenly that man whose
sentiment towards herself she could not understand, she could not even
see. There was only an instinctive clinging to old life, to old habits,
to old faces; that fear of finality which lurks in every human breast and
prevents so many heroisms and so many crimes. For years she had stood
between her mother and her father, the one so strong in her weakness, the
other so weak where he could have been strong. Between those two beings
so dissimilar, so antagonistic, she stood with mute heart wondering and
angry at the fact of her own existence. It seemed so unreasonable, so
humiliating to be flung there in that settlement and to see the days rush
by into the past, without a hope, a desire, or an aim that would justify
the life she had to endure in ever-growing weariness. She had little
belief and no sympathy for her father's dreams; but the savage ravings of
her mother chanced to strike a responsive chord, deep down somewhere in
her despairing heart; and she dreamed dreams of her own with the
persistent absorption of a captive thinking of liberty within the walls
of his prison cell. With the coming of Dain she found the road to
freedom by obeying the voice of the new-born impulses, and with surprised
joy she thought she could read in his eyes t