Her face was grave and her eyes looked seriously at him.

Her fingers touched the hair of his temple, ran in a light caress down his cheek, twisted gently the end of his long moustache: and while he sat in the tremor of that contact she ran off with startling fleetness and disappeared in a peal of clear laughter, in the stir of grass, in the nod of young twigs growing over the path; leaving behind only a vanishing trail of motion and sound.
He scrambled to his feet slowly and painfully, like a man with a burden on his shoulders, and walked towards the riverside.

He hugged to his breast the recollection of his fear and of his delight, but told himself seriously over and over again that this must be the end of that adventure.

After shoving off his canoe into the stream he lifted his eyes to the bank and gazed at it long and steadily, as if taking his last look at a place of charming memories.

He marched up to Almayer's house with the concentrated expression and the determined step of a man who had just taken a momentous resolution.