ou know nothing. I must . . ."

He interrupted--unreasonably excited, as if she had, by her look,
inoculated him with some of her own distress.

"I know enough."

She approached, and stood facing him at arm's length, with both her
hands on his shoulders; and he, surprised by that audacity, closed and
opened his eyes two or three times, aware of some emotion arising
within him, from her words, her tone, her contact; an emotion unknown,
singular, penetrating and sad--at the close sight of that strange
woman, of that being savage and tender, strong and delicate, fearful and
resolute, that had got entangled so fatally between their two lives--his
own and that other white man's, the abominable scoundrel.

"How can you know?" she went on, in a persuasive tone that seemed to
flow out of her very heart--"how can you know? I live with him all
the days. All the nights. I look at him; I see his every breath, every
glance of his eye, every movement of his lips. I see nothing else!
What else is there? And even I do not understand. I do not understand
him!--Him!--My life! Him who to me is so great that his presence hides
the earth and the water from my sight!"

Lingard stood straight, with his hands deep in the pockets of his
jacket. His eyes winked quickly, because she spoke very close to his
face. She disturbed him and he had a sense of the efforts he was making
to get hold of her meaning, while all the time he could not help telling
himself that all this was of no use.

She added after a pause--"There has been a time when I could understand
him. When I knew what was in his mind better than he knew it himself.
When I felt him. When I held him. . . . And now he has escaped."

"Escaped? What? Gone away!" shouted Lingard.

"Escaped from me," she said; "left me alone. Alone. And I am ever near
him. Yet alone."

Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms fell
by her side, listless, discouraged, as if to her--to her, the savage,
violent, and ignorant creature--had been revealed clearly in that moment
the tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and
transparent, elusive and everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness
that surrounds, envelopes, clothes every human soul from the cradle to
the grave, and, perhaps, beyond.

"Aye! Very well! I understand. His face is turned away from you," said
Lingard. "Now, what do you want?"

"I want . . . I have looked--for help . . . everywhere . .