"Heart of Darkness"
by Joseph Conrad

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     "Any party," answered the other. "He was an -- an -- extremist." Did I not think so?

     I assented. Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity, "what it was that had induced him to go out there?"

     "Yes," said I, and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged "it would do," and took himself off with this plunder.

 

     Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful -- I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features.

     She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and those letters myself.

 
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