ing his
last look at a place of charming memories. He marched up to Almayer's
house with the concentrated expression and the determined step of a man
who had just taken a momentous resolution. His face was set and rigid,
his gestures and movements were guarded and slow. He was keeping a tight
hand on himself. A very tight hand. He had a vivid illusion--as vivid
as reality almost--of being in charge of a slippery prisoner. He
sat opposite Almayer during that dinner--which was their last meal
together--with a perfectly calm face and within him a growing terror of
escape from his own self.

Now and then he would grasp the edge of the table and set his teeth hard
in a sudden wave of acute despair, like one who, falling down a smooth
and rapid declivity that ends in a precipice, digs his finger nails into
the yielding surface and feels himself slipping helplessly to inevitable
destruction.

Then, abruptly, came a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way of his
will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that wish, that idea
kept back during all those hours, darted into his brain with the heat
and noise of a conflagration. He must see her! See her at once! Go now!
To-night! He had the raging regret of the lost hour, of every passing
moment. There was no thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive
fear of the irrevocable, with the innate falseness of the human heart,
he wanted to keep open the way of retreat. He had never absented himself
during the night. What did Almayer know? What would Almayer think?
Better ask him for the gun. A moonlight night. . . . Look for deer. . . .
A colourable pretext. He would lie to Almayer. What did it matter! He
lied to himself every minute of his life. And for what? For a woman. And
such. . . .

Almayer's answer showed him that deception was useless. Everything
gets to be known, even in this place. Well, he did not care. Cared for
nothing but for the lost seconds. What if he should suddenly die. Die
before he saw her. Before he could . . .

As, with the sound of Almayer's laughter in his ears, he urged his canoe
in a slanting course across the rapid current, he tried to tell himself
that he could return at any moment. He would just go and look at the
place where they used to meet, at the tree under which he lay when she
took his hand, at the spot where she sat by his side. Just go there and
then return--nothing more; but when his little skiff touched the bank
he leaped out,