Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
dom; they cast a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they changed his weary subjection to that dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power. He would cherish her, he said, in a splendor as great as Dona Emilia's. The rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had taken from the rich nothing nothing that was not lost to them already by their folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed he said deceived, tempted. She believed him. . . . He had kept the treasure for purposes of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with olive-trees a white hill above a blue sea. He would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would get land for her her own land fertile with vines and corn to set her little feet upon. He embraced them. . . . He had already paid for it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . . The capataz de cargadores tasted the supreme in- toxication of his generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness defying as men said—the knowledge of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let him grow rich first—he warned her.
She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair. He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had flung his soul away.
"Make haste, then," she said. "Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my master, for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am afraid of Linda."
He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted the courage of her love. She promised to
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