`Ramirez told you he loved you?' asked Nostromo, restraining himself.
`Ah! once -- one evening . . .'
`The miserable . . . Ha!'
He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her mute with anger.
`Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian' Battista! Poor wretch that I am!' she lamented in ingenuous tones. `I told Linda, and she scolded -- she scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you.'
He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her white throat, which had the invincible charm of things young, palpitating, delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had known? Was it possible? It dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very little -- nothing -- of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like a thing unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed him before the perils of this life added its steady force to the violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued:
`And between you three you have brought me here into this captivity to the sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and water. Oh, Santissima Madre. My hair shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, Gian' Battista!'
He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She bemoaned her fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its perfume in the coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were little, going out with their mother to Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she supposed.
He broke out:
`Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white throat. . . .'
Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more self-conscious than a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even a flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, and added, impetuously:
`Your little feet!'
Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes glanced at her little feet.
`And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah! now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She will not be so fierce.'
`Chica!' said Nostromo, `I have not told her anything.'
`Then make haste. Come tomorrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have some peace from her scolding and -- perhaps -- who knows . . .'
`Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that it? You . . .'
`Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,' she said, unmoved. `Who is Ramirez . . . Ramirez . . . Who is he?' she repeated, dreamily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in