ed life given up to impulses, whose memory left a bitter taste in his mouth, was the first moral sentiment

If his manhood. But at the sanu- tune he felt no re- horse. What should In- lie had recognized l.o other virtue than intelligence, and had erected pas- lions into duties. Hoth his intelligence and Impassion swallowed up easily in this great unbroken sH- le of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had rob- in his will of all energy, for he had not slept seven ors in the seven days. His sadness was the sadness l sceptical mind. He beheld the universe as a suc- fesion of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was ad. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no Inger dared to think 01" Antonia. She had not sur- ved. But if she survived he could not face her. Lnd all exertion seemed senseless. On the tenth day, after a night spent without even (dozing off once (it had occurred to him that Antonia Icould not possibly have ever loved a being so impal- pable as himself), the solitude appeared like a great jvoid, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands, with- out fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the com- parative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined it snapping with a report as of a pistol a sharp, full crack. And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that eventuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights in which the silence, remaining un- broken in the shape of a cord to which he hung with

both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always