monotonous whisper like an instrument of which all the strings but one are broken in a last ringing clamour under a heavy blow.
She rose to her feet and looked at him. The very violence of his cry soothed her in an intuitive conviction of his love, and she hugged to her breast the lamentable remnants of that affection with the unscrupulous greediness of women who cling desperately to the very scraps and rags of love, any kind of love, as a thing that of right belongs to them and is the very breath of their life. She put both her hands on Almayer's shoulders, and looking at him half tenderly, half playfully, she said—
"You speak so because you love me."
Almayer shook his head.
"Yes, you do," she insisted softly; then after a short pause she added, "and you will never forget me."
Almayer shivered slightly. She could not have said a more cruel thing.
"Here is the boat coming now," said Dain, his arm outstretched towards a black speck on the water between the coast and the islet.
They all looked at it and remained standing in silence till the little canoe came gently on the beach and a man landed and walked towards them. He stopped some distance off and hesitated.
"What news?" asked Dain.
"We have had orders secretly and in the night to take off from this islet a man and a woman. I see the woman. Which of you is the man?"
"Come, delight of my eyes," said Dain to Nina. "Now we go, and your voice shall be for my ears only. You have spoken your last words to the Tuan Putih, your father. Come."
She hesitated for a while, looking at Almayer, who
