Go very far away! Very far; you and I!"

He did not stop to ask himself whether he could escape, and how, and
where. He was carried away by the flood of hate, disgust, and contempt
of a white man for that blood which is not his blood, for that race
which is not his race; for the brown skins; for the hearts false like
the sea, blacker than night. This feeling of repulsion overmastered his
reason in a clear conviction of the impossibility for him to live with
her people. He urged her passionately to fly with him because out of all
that abhorred crowd he wanted this one woman, but wanted her away from
them, away from that race of slaves and cut-throats from which she
sprang. He wanted her for himself--far from everybody, in some safe and
dumb solitude. And as he spoke his anger and contempt rose, his hate
became almost fear; and his desire of her grew immense, burning,
illogical and merciless; crying to him through all his senses;
louder than his hate, stronger than his fear, deeper than his
contempt--irresistible and certain like death itself.

Standing at a little distance, just within the light--but on the
threshold of that darkness from which she had come--she listened, one
hand still behind her back, the other arm stretched out with the hand
half open as if to catch the fleeting words that rang around her,
passionate, menacing, imploring, but all tinged with the anguish of his
suffering, all hurried by the impatience that gnawed his breast. And
while she listened she felt a slowing down of her heart-beats as the
meaning of his appeal grew clearer before her indignant eyes, as she saw
with rage and pain the edifice of her love, her own work, crumble slowly
to pieces, destroyed by that man's fears, by that man's falseness. Her
memory recalled the days by the brook when she had listened to other
words--to other thoughts--to promises and to pleadings for other things,
which came from that man's lips at the bidding of her look or her smile,
at the nod of her head, at the whisper of her lips. Was there then in
his heart something else than her image, other desires than the desires
of her love, other fears than the fear of losing her? How could that be?
Had she grown ugly or old in a moment? She was appalled, surprised and
angry with the anger of unexpected humiliation; and her eyes looked
fixedly, sombre and steady, at that man born in the land of violence
and of evil wherefrom nothing but misfortune comes to those who are