Conrad and Masculinity

190 Conrad and Masculinity
Next day ... she managed to give him a glance of frank tenderness,
quick as lightning, and leaving a profound impression, a secret
touch on the heart.
(92)
His tone was playful, but his eyes, directed at her face, were serious
... She remained silent for a while, returning his gaze till he
removed it ... His gaze travelled up her figure and reached her face,
where he seemed to detect the veiled glow of intelligence ... Heyst
spoke just to say something rather than to gaze at her in silence.
(191)
He felt intensely aware of her personality, as if this were the first
moment of leisure he had found to look at her.
(192)
Looking towards him with a movement of her eyes only, the girl
noticed the strong feeling on his face ... he remained staring ...
observing her indefinable expression of anxiety.
(202–3)
Heyst came out with an abrupt burst of sound which made her open
her steady eyes wider ... She could understand him better then than
at any moment since she first set eyes on him ... ‘I assure you I could
see much more than you could tell me. I could see quite a lot that
you don’t even suspect yet; but you can’t be seen quite through.’
(209–10)
His eyes rested on her, inquisitive, ready for tenderness.
(214)
In Chapters 3 and 4 of Part 3 (describing a morning in the life of Lena
and Heyst on Samburan, just before the intrusion of the villains) we
find a sort of visual duel between the two characters, beginning and
ending with oblique allusions to their sexual relations. At the start of
Chapter 3 we are told that ‘Heyst came out on the veranda and spread
his elbows on the railing, in an easy attitude of proprietorship’ (185).
This sense of proprietorship, overtly of the bungalow and the island,
implicitly extends to Lena. At the end of Chapter 4 Conrad employs
what was later to become a clichéd film technique to indicate sex, as
his narrative passes discretely over a period of time in between Heyst