He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's
face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only,
as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and
dreaded; that white-haired, rough and severe head upon which he gazed in
a fixed effort of his eyes, like a man trying to read small print at
the full range of human vision. As soon as Willems' feet had left the
planks, the silence which had been lifted up by the jerky rattle of his
footsteps fell down again upon the courtyard; the silence of the cloudy
sky and of the windless air, the sullen silence of the earth oppressed
by the aspect of coming turmoil, the silence of the world collecting its
faculties to withstand the storm. Through this silence Willems pushed
his way, and stopped about six feet from Lingard. He stopped simply
because he could go no further. He had started from the door with the
reckless purpose of clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. He had
no idea that the man would turn out to be so tall, so big and so
unapproachable.
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