Chapter 10 - Page 2

that was steady enough now, "and if you be wise you shall have much power
that will endure many days, and even last into your old age. What have I
been? A slave all my life, and I have cooked rice for a man who had no
courage and no wisdom. Hai! I! even I, was given in gift by a chief and
a warrior to a man that was neither. Hai! Hai!"

She wailed to herself softly, lamenting the lost possibilities of murder
and mischief that could have fallen to her lot had she been mated with a
congenial spirit. Nina bent down over Mrs. Almayer's slight form and
scanned attentively, under the stars that had rushed out on the black sky
and now hung breathless over that strange parting, her mother's
shrivelled features, and looked close into the sunken eyes that could see
into her own dark future by the light of a long and a painful experience.
Again she felt herself fascinated, as of old, by her mother's exalted
mood and by the oracular certainty of expression which, together with her
fits of violence, had contributed not a little to the reputation for
witchcraft she enjoyed in the settlement.

* * * * *

"I was a slave, and you shall be a queen," went on Mrs. Almayer, looking
straight before her; "but remember men's strength and their weakness.
Tremble before his anger, so that he may see your fear in the light of
day; but in your heart you may laugh, for after sunset he is your slave."

"A slave! He! The master of life! You do not know him, mother."

Mrs. Almayer condescended to laugh contemptuously.

"You speak like a fool of a white woman," she exclaimed. "What do you
know of men's anger and of men's love? Have you watched the sleep of men
weary of dealing death? Have you felt about you the strong arm that
could drive a kriss deep into a beating heart? Yah! you are a white
woman, and ought to pray to a woman-god!"

"Why do you say this? I have listened to your words so long that I have
forgotten my old life. If I was white would I stand here, ready to go?
Mother, I shall return to the house and look once more at my father's
face."

"No!" said Mrs. Almayer, violently. "No, he sleeps now the sleep of gin;
and if you went back he might awake and see you. No, he shall never see
you. When the terrible old man took you away from me when you were
little, you remember--"

"It was such a long time ago," murmured Nina.

"I remember," went on Mrs. Almayer, fiercely. "I wanted to look at your
face again. He said no! I heard you cry and jumped into the river. You
were his daughter then; you are my daughter now. Never shall you go back
to that house; you shall never cross this courtyard