d his face for a moment in his hands, and when he took them away
he had lost the appearance of comparative calm and gave way to a wild
distress.

"Captain Lingard . . . anything . . . a deserted island . . . anywhere
. . . I promise . . ."

"Shut up!" shouted Lingard, roughly.

He became dumb, suddenly, completely.

The wan light of the clouded morning retired slowly from the courtyard,
from the clearings, from the river, as if it had gone unwillingly to
hide in the enigmatical solitudes of the gloomy and silent forests. The
clouds over their heads thickened into a low vault of uniform blackness.
The air was still and inexpressibly oppressive. Lingard unbuttoned his
jacket, flung it wide open and, inclining his body sideways a little,
wiped his forehead with his hand, which he jerked sharply afterwards.
Then he looked at Willems and said--

"No promise of yours is any good to me. I am going to take your conduct
into my own hands. Pay attention to what I am going to say. You are my
prisoner."

Willems' head moved imperceptibly; then he became rigid and still. He
seemed not to breathe.

"You shall stay here," continued Lingard, with sombre deliberation. "You
are not fit to go amongst people. Who could suspect, who could guess,
who could imagine what's in you? I couldn't! You are my mistake. I shall
hide you here. If I let you out you would go amongst unsuspecting men,
and lie, and steal, and cheat for a little money or for some woman. I
don't care about shooting you. It would be the safest way though. But
I won't. Do not expect me to forgive you. To forgive one must have been
angry and become contemptuous, and there is nothing in me now--no anger,
no contempt, no disappointment. To me you are not Willems, the man I
befriended and helped through thick and thin, and thought much of . . .
You are not a human being that may be destroyed or forgiven. You are a
bitter thought, a something without a body and that must be hidden . . .
You are my shame."

He ceased and looked slowly round. How dark it was! It seemed to him
that the light was dying prematurely out of the world and that the air
was already dead.

"Of course," he went on, "I shall see to it that you don't starve."

"You don't mean to say that I must live here, Captain Lingard?" said
Willems, in a kind of mechanical voice without any inflections.

"Did you ever hear me say something I did not mean?" asked Lingard. "You
said you didn't want to die here--w