Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad


We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and Senor Ortega
had ceased his muttering. For myself I had not the slightest doubt
of my own sanity. It was proved to me by the way I could apply my
intelligence to the problem of what was to be done with Senor
Ortega. Generally, he was unfit to be trusted with any mission
whatever. The unstability of his temper was sure to get him into a
scrape. Of course carrying a letter to Headquarters was not a very
complicated matter; and as to that I would have trusted willingly a
properly trained dog. My private letter to Dona Rita, the
wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for the
present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem mainly in the
terms of Dona Rita's safety. Her image presided at every council,
at every conflict of my mind, and dominated every faculty of my
senses. It floated before my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded
my right side and my left side; my ears seemed to catch the sound
of her footsteps behind me, she enveloped me with passing whiffs of
warmth and perfume, with filmy touches of the hair on my face. She
penetrated me, my head was full of her . . . And his head, too, I
thought suddenly with a side glance at my companion. He walked
quietly with hunched-up shoulders carrying his little hand-bag and
he looked the most commonplace figure imaginable.

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