Joseph Conrad

“ Instead of taking counsel as to the choice with his old backer and friend, and a man, besides, knowing everybody employed and unemployed on the pavements of the town, this extraordinary Renouard suddenly and almost surreptitiously picked up a fellow--God knows who--and sailed away with him back to Malata in a hurry; a proceeding obviously rash and at the same time not quite straight. That was the sort of thing. The secretly unforgiving journalist laughed a little longer and then ceased to shake all over.
"Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . ." ”

“ Didn't his friend know that he was their one and only explorer--that he was the man experimenting with the silk plant. . . .
"Still, that doesn't tell me why I was invited yesterday. For young Dunster never thought of this civility before. . . ."
"Our Willie," said the popular journalist, "never does anything without a purpose, that's a fact." ”

“ Yet somehow he hesitated to approach the subject. Solitary life makes a man reticent in respect of anything in the nature of gossip, which those to whom chatting about their kind is an everyday exercise regard as the commonest use of speech. ”

“ Those people have something on their minds. We sat in the light of the window, and her father prowled about the terrace, with his hands behind his back and his head drooping. The white-haired lady came to the dining-room window twice--to look at us I am certain. The other guests began to go away--and still we sat there. Apparently these people are staying with the Dunsters. It was old Mrs. Dunster who put an end to the thing. ”

“ I am done. Social paragraphs. This office is the place where everything is known about everybody--including even a great deal of nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this room. Waifs and strays from home, from up-country, from the Pacific. And, by the way, last time you were here you picked up one of that sort for your assistant--didn't you?"
"I engaged an assistant only to stop your preaching about the evils of solitude," said Renouard hastily ”

“ Said his uncle had mentioned lately that the granting to me of the Malata concession was the last act of his official life."
"Very touching. The old boy sentimentalises over the past now and then."
"I really don't know why I accepted," continued the other. "Sentiment does not move me very easily. Old Dunster was civil to me of course, but he did not even inquire how I was getting on with my silk plants. ”

“ You are used to see his face and to see other faces. I don't know how it is that, when I come to town, the appearance of the people in the street strike me with such force. They seem so awfully expressive. ”