Joseph Conrad

“ I did not lie exactly, Lena, though I did stretch the truth till it cracked; but the fellow seems to have an uncanny insight. He shook his head. He assured me they knew all about you. He made a horrible grimace at me."
"It doesn't matter," said the girl. "I didn't want--I would not have gone."
Heyst raised his eyes.
"Wonderful intuition! As I continued to press him, Wang made that very remark about you. When he smiles, his face looks like a conceited death's head. ”

“ He was so profoundly touched that he could not speak for a moment. To conceal his trouble, he assumed his best Heystian manner.
"What? Are our visitors then messengers of morality, avengers of righteousness, agents of Providence? That's certainly an original view. How flattered they would be if they could hear you!"
"Now you are making fun of me," she said in a subdued voice which broke suddenly.
"Are you conscious of sin?" Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer. "For I am not," he added; "before Heaven, I am not!"
"You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. ”

“ Heyst held steadily on his way towards the upper limit of the forest. The moment they left its shelter, a breeze enveloped them, and a great cloud, racing over the sun, threw a peculiar sombre tint over everything. Heyst pointed up a precipitous, rugged path clinging to the side of the hill. It ended in a barricade of felled trees, a primitively conceived obstacle which must have cost much labour to erect at just that spot.
"This," Heyst, explained in his urbane tone, "is a barrier against the march of civilization. ”

“ He is the most remarkable man they have ever seen, and their kinsman by marriage. They understand his policy. And anyway only women and children and a few old fellows are left in the village. This is the season when the men are away in trading vessels. But it would have been all the same. None of them have a taste for fighting--and with white men too! They are peaceable, kindly folk and would have seen me shot with extreme satisfaction. Wang seemed to think my insistence--for I insisted, you know--very stupid and tactless. But a drowning man clutches at straws. ”

“ To shove off in an empty boat would be nothing but a desperate expedition, supposing even that she would drift out a good distance between the islands before the morning. It would only be a complicated manner of committing suicide--to be found dead in a boat, dead from sun and thirst. ”

“ Heyst went on in his ordinary voice. "Here we are in the forest. I have neither strength nor persuasion. Indeed, it's extremely difficult to be eloquent before a Chinaman's head stuck at one out of a lot of brushwood. But can we wander among these big trees indefinitely? Is this a refuge? No! What else is left to us? I did think for a moment of the mine ”