Quotation from: Lord Jim

Written by: Joseph Conrad


'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my helping
hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade the night seemed
to wait for him very still, as though he had been marked down for its
prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a
few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after--after . . ."
I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a
gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to
take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much
to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent
you. The damned thing won't make me invisible," he said with intense
bitterness,--"no such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he
treated me to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an
awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken it
into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to
shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted suddenly
at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff;
I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a miserable grin
on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous laugh. The candle
spluttered out, and the thing was over at last, with a groan that
floated up to me in the dark. He got himself away somehow. The night
swallowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. I heard the
quick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his boots. He was running.
Absolutely running, with nowhere to go to. And he was not yet
four-and-twenty.'

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.