Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad


I may as well say at once that we didn't stay as long as that. It
was not that morning that I saw for the first time Therese of the
whispering lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass
from the house of iniquity into the early winter murk of the city
of perdition, in a world steeped in sin. No. It was not on that
morning that I saw Dona Rita's incredible sister with her brown,
dry face, her gliding motion, and her really nun-like dress, with a
black handkerchief enfolding her head tightly, with the two pointed
ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like enough. And yet not
altogether. People would have turned round after her if those
dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn't been the only
occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was
frightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a
danger but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn't fly back to
her mountains because at bottom she had an indomitable character, a
peasant tenacity of purpose, predatory instincts. . . .

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