aint words which he
did not catch. He moved away from the door on tiptoe, kicked off his
slippers in a corner of the verandah, then entered the passage puffing
at his pipe; entered cautiously in a gentle creaking of planks and
turned into a curtained entrance to the left. There was a big room. On
the floor a small binnacle lamp--that had found its way to the house
years ago from the lumber-room of the Flash--did duty for a night-light.
It glimmered very small and dull in the great darkness. Almayer walked
to it, and picking it up revived the flame by pulling the wick with his
fingers, which he shook directly after with a grimace of pain. Sleeping
shapes, covered--head and all--with white sheets, lay about on the mats
on the floor. In the middle of the room a small cot, under a square
white mosquito net, stood--the only piece of furniture between the four
walls--looking like an altar of transparent marble in a gloomy temple. A
woman, half-lying on the floor with her head dropped on her arms, which
were crossed on the foot of the cot, woke up as Almayer strode over
her outstretched legs. She sat up without a word, leaning forward, and,
clasping her knees, stared down with sad eyes, full of sleep.

Almayer, the smoky light in one hand, his pipe in the other, stood
before the curtained cot looking at his daughter--at his little Nina--at
that part of himself, at that small and unconscious particle of humanity
that seemed to him to contain all his soul. And it was as if he had been
bathed in a bright and warm wave of tenderness, in a tenderness greater
than the world, more precious than life; the only thing real, living,
sweet, tangible, beautiful and safe amongst the elusive, the distorted
and menacing shadows of existence. On his face, lit up indistinctly by
the short yellow flame of the lamp, came a look of rapt attention
while he looked into her future. And he could see things there! Things
charming and splendid passing before him in a magic unrolling of
resplendent pictures; pictures of events brilliant, happy, inexpressibly
glorious, that would make up her life. He would do it! He would do it.
He would! He would--for that child! And as he stood in the still night,
lost in his enchanting and gorgeous dreams, while the ascending, thin
thread of tobacco smoke spread into a faint bluish cloud above his head,
he appeared strangely impressive and ecstatic: like a devout and mystic
worshipper, adoring, transported and mute; bur