hirl of silver coins; the glorious uncertainty of a money hunt; his
numerous successes, the lost possibilities of wealth and consequent
glory. She, a woman, was the victim of her heart, of her woman's belief
that there is nothing in the world but love--the everlasting thing.
He was the victim of his strange principles, of his continence, of his
blind belief in himself, of his solemn veneration for the voice of his
boundless ignorance.

In a moment of his idleness, of suspense, of discouragement, she had
come--that creature--and by the touch of her hand had destroyed his
future, his dignity of a clever and civilized man; had awakened in his
breast the infamous thing which had driven him to what he had done, and
to end miserably in the wilderness and be forgotten, or else remembered
with hate or contempt. He dared not look at her, because now whenever
he looked at her his thought seemed to touch crime, like an outstretched
hand. She could only look at him--and at nothing else. What else was
there? She followed him with a timorous gaze, with a gaze for ever
expecting, patient, and entreating. And in her eyes there was the wonder
and desolation of an animal that knows only suffering, of the incomplete
soul that knows pain but knows not hope; that can find no refuge from
the facts of life in the illusory conviction of its dignity, of an
exalted destiny beyond; in the heavenly consolation of a belief in the
momentous origin of its hate.

For the first three days after Lingard went away he would not even
speak to her. She preferred his silence to the sound of hated and
incomprehensible words he had been lately addressing to her with a wild
violence of manner, passing at once into complete apathy. And during
these three days he hardly ever left the river, as if on that muddy bank
he had felt himself nearer to his freedom. He would stay late; he would
stay till sunset; he would look at the glow of gold passing away amongst
sombre clouds in a bright red flush, like a splash of warm blood. It
seemed to him ominous and ghastly with a foreboding of violent death
that beckoned him from everywhere--even from the sky.

One evening he remained by the riverside long after sunset, regardless
of the night mist that had closed round him, had wrapped him up and
clung to him like a wet winding-sheet. A slight shiver recalled him to
his senses, and he walked up the courtyard towards his house. Aissa rose
from before the fire, that glimmered