! She had a clear vision of the grey hairs
on his temples. He was perfect - perfect. What more could she have expected? It
was a colossal and lasting success; and love was only a short moment of
forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose delight one remembered with a sense
of sadness, as if it had been a deep grief lived through. There was something
inherent in the necessities of successful action which carried with it the moral
degradation of the idea. She saw the San Tomé mountain hanging over the Campo,
over the whole land, feared, hated, wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more
pitiless and autocratic than the worst Government; ready to crush innumerable
lives in the expansion of its greatness. He did not see it. He could not see it.
It was not his fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never have him to
herself. Never; not for one short hour altogether to herself in this old Spanish
house she loved so well! Incorrigible, the last of the Corbeláns, the last of
the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw clearly the San Tomé mine
possessing, consuming, burning up the life of the last of the Costaguana Goulds;
mastering the energetic spirit of the son as it had mastered the lamentable
weakness of the father. A terrible success for the last of the Goulds. The last!
She had hoped for a long, long time, that perhaps - But no! There were to be no
more. An immense desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon
the first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself surviving
alone the degradation of her young ideal of life, of love, of work - all alone
in the Treasure House of the World. The profound, blind, suffering expression of
a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes. In the indistinct
voice of an unlucky sleeper, lying passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare,
she stammered out aimlessly the words -
    »Material interest.«
 

                                 Chapter Twelve

Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was an effect of his prudence. He
could command himself even when thrown off his balance. And to become the slave
of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an occurrence rare and mentally
disturbing. But it was also in a great part because of the difficulty of
converting it into a form in which it could become available. The mere act of
getting it away from the island piecemeal, little by little, was surrounded by
difficulties, by the dangers of imminent detection. He had
