Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full
of the country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that
girl, and his mind of the San Tome Concession. He added that he
would have to leave her for a few days to find an American, a man
from San Francisco, who was still somewhere in Europe. A few
months before he had made his acquaintance in an old historic
German town, situated in a mining district. The American had his
womankind with him, but seemed lonely while they were sketching
all day long the old doorways and the turreted corners of the
mediaeval houses. Charles Gould had with him the inseparable
companionship of the mine. The other man was interested in mining
enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to
the name of Gould. They had talked together with some intimacy
which was made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles
wanted now to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible
character. His father's fortune in Costaguana, which he had
supposed to be still considerable, seemed to have melted in the
rascally crucible of revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand
pounds deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing left
except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest exploitation
in a remote and savage district, and the San Tome Concession,
which had attended his poor father to the very brink of the
grave.

He explained those things. It was late when they parted. She had
never before given him such a fascinating vision of herself. All
the eagerness of youth for a strange life, for great distances,
for a future in which there was an air of adventure, of combat--a
subtle thought of redress and conquest, had filled her with an
intense excitement, which she returned to the giver with a more
open and exquisite display of tenderness.