"Heart of Darkness"
by Joseph Conrad

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     "But I do not. I cannot -- I cannot believe -- not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never."

     She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness.

 

     She said suddenly very low, "He died as he lived."

     "His end," said I, with dull anger stirring in me, "was in every way worthy of his life."

     "And I was not with him," she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

     "Everything that could be done -- " I mumbled.

     "Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth -- more than his own mother, more than -- himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance."

 
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