“Very well,” he agreed with a resigned smile.  “But you just catch hold of that rail, please, before I let you go.”  She, too, forced a smile on her lips.

“What incredulity,” she remarked, and for a time made not the slightest movement.  At last, as if making a concession, she rested the tips of her fingers on the rail.  Lingard gradually removed his arm.  “And pray don’t look upon me as a conventional ‘weak woman’ person, the delicate lady of your own conception,” she said, facing Lingard, with her arm extended to the rail.  “Make that effort please against your own conception of what a woman like me should be.  I am perhaps as strong as you are, Captain Lingard.  I mean it literally.  In my body.”—­“Don’t you think I have seen that long ago?” she heard his deep voice protesting.—­“And as to my courage,” Mrs. Travers continued, her expression charmingly undecided between frowns and smiles; “didn’t I tell you only a few hours ago, only last evening, that I was not capable of thinking myself into a fright; you remember, when you were begging me to try something of the kind.  Don’t imagine that I would have been ashamed to try.  But I couldn’t have done it.  No.  Not even for the sake of somebody else’s kingdom.  Do you understand me?”

“God knows,” said the attentive Lingard after a time, with an unexpected sigh.  “You people seem to be made of another stuff.”

“What has put that absurd notion into your head?”

“I didn’t mean better or worse.  And I wouldn’t say it isn’t good stuff either.  What I meant to say is that it’s different.  One feels it.  And here we are.”

“Yes, here we are,” repeated Mrs. Travers.  “And as to this moment of emotion, what provoked it is not a concern for anybody or anything outside myself.  I felt no terror.  I cannot even fix my fears upon any distinct image.  You think I am shamelessly heartless in telling you this.”

Lingard made no sign.  It didn’t occur to him to make a sign.  He simply hung on Mrs. Travers’ words as it were only for the sake of the sound.—­“I am simply frank with you,” she continued.  “What do I know of savagery, violence, murder?  I have never seen a dead body in my life.  The light, the silence, the mysterious emptiness of this place have suddenly affected my imagination, I suppose.  What is the meaning of this wonderful peace in which we stand—­you and I alone?”

Lingard shook his head.  He saw the narrow gleam of the woman’s teeth between the parted lips of her smile, as if all the ardour of her conviction had been dissolved at the end of her speech into wistful recognition of their partnership before things outside their knowledge.  And he was warmed by something a little helpless in that smile.  Within three feet of them the shade of Jorgenson, very gaunt and neat, stared into space.

“Yes.  You are strong,” said Lingard.  “But a whole long night sitting in a small boat!  I wonder you are not too stiff to stand.”