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Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard girl? Let her grow. What are you afraid of? You have been angry with me for everything I did for years; ever since you first spoke to me, in secret from old Giorgio, about your Linda. Husband to one and brother to the other, did you say? Well, why not? I like the little ones, and a man must marry some time. But ever since that time you have been making little of me to every one. Why? Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in the railway-yards? Look here, padrona, I am the same man who came ashore one evening and sat down in the thatched ranche you lived in at that time on the other side of the town and told you all about himself. You were not unjust to me then. What has happened since? I am no longer an insignificant youth. A good name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, padrona."

"They have turned your head with their praises," gasped the sick woman. "They have been paying you with words. Your folly shall betray you into poverty, misery, starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at you the great capataz."

Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never looked at him. A self-confident, mirthless smile passed quickly from his lips, and then he backed away. His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway. He descended the stairs backward, with the usual sense of having been somehow baffled by this woman's disparagement of this reputation he had obtained and desired to keep.

Down-stairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the shadows of the walls on the ceiling,