and I without the power to help you, I could
not suffer a greater torment. Have you forgotten the teaching of so many
years?"

"No," she interrupted, "I remember it well. I remember how it ended
also. Scorn for scorn, contempt for contempt, hate for hate. I am not
of your race. Between your people and me there is also a barrier that
nothing can remove. You ask why I want to go, and I ask you why I should
stay."

He staggered as if struck in the face, but with a quick, unhesitating
grasp she caught him by the arm and steadied him.

"Why you should stay!" he repeated slowly, in a dazed manner, and stopped
short, astounded at the completeness of his misfortune.

"You told me yesterday," she went on again, "that I could not understand
or see your love for me: it is so. How can I? No two human beings
understand each other. They can understand but their own voices. You
wanted me to dream your dreams, to see your own visions--the visions of
life amongst the white faces of those who cast me out from their midst in
angry contempt. But while you spoke I listened to the voice of my own
self; then this man came, and all was still; there was only the murmur of
his love. You call him a savage! What do you call my mother, your
wife?"

"Nina!" cried Almayer, "take your eyes off my face."

She looked down directly, but continued speaking only a little above a
whisper.

"In time," she went on, "both our voices, that man's and mine, spoke
together in a sweetness that was intelligible to our ears only. You were
speaking of gold then, but our ears were filled with the song of our
love, and we did not hear you. Then I found that we could see through
each other's eyes: that he saw things that nobody but myself and he could
see. We entered a land where no one could follow us, and least of all
you. Then I began to live."

She paused. Almayer sighed deeply. With her eyes still fixed on the
ground she began speaking again.

"And I mean to live. I mean to follow him. I have been rejected with
scorn by the white people, and now I am a Malay! He took me in his arms,
he laid his life at my feet. He is brave; he will be powerful, and I
hold his bravery and his strength in my hand, and I shall make him great.
His name shall be remembered long after both our bodies are laid in the
dust. I love you no less than I did before, but I shall never leave him,
for without him I cannot live."

"If he understood what you have