Mrs. Travers clasped her hands behind her head.  The wide sleeves slipping back bared her arms to her shoulders.  She was wearing a Malay thin cotton jacket, cut low in the neck without a collar and fastened with wrought silver clasps from the throat downward.  She had replaced her yachting skirt by a blue check sarong embroidered with threads of gold.  Mr. Travers’ eyes travelling slowly down attached themselves to the gleaming instep of an agitated foot from which hung a light leather sandal.

“I had no clothes with me but what I stood in,” said Mrs. Travers.  “I found my yachting costume too heavy.  It was intolerable.  I was soaked in dew when I arrived.  So when these things were produced for my inspection. . . .”

“By enchantment,” muttered Mr. Travers in a tone too heavy for sarcasm.

“No.  Out of that chest.  There are very fine stuffs there.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Travers.  “The man wouldn’t be above plundering the natives. . . .”  He sat down heavily on the chest.  “A most appropriate costume for this farce,” he continued.  “But do you mean to wear it in open daylight about the decks?”

“Indeed I do,” said Mrs. Travers.  “D’Alcacer has seen me already and he didn’t seem shocked.”

“You should,” said Mr. Travers, “try to get yourself presented with some bangles for your ankles so that you may jingle as you walk.”

“Bangles are not necessities,” said Mrs. Travers in a weary tone and with the fixed upward look of a person unwilling to relinquish her dream.  Mr. Travers dropped the subject to ask: 

“And how long is this farce going to last?”

Mrs. Travers unclasped her hands, lowered her glance, and changed her whole pose in a moment.

“What do you mean by farce?  What farce?”

“The one which is being played at my expense.”

“You believe that?”

“Not only believe.  I feel deeply that it is so.  At my expense.  It’s a most sinister thing,” Mr. Travers pursued, still with downcast eyes and in an unforgiving tone.  “I must tell you that when I saw you in that courtyard in a crowd of natives and leaning on that man’s arm, it gave me quite a shock.”

“Did I, too, look sinister?” said Mrs. Travers, turning her head slightly toward her husband.  “And yet I assure you that I was glad, profoundly glad, to see you safe from danger for a time at least.  To gain time is everything. . . .”

“I ask myself,” Mr. Travers meditated aloud, “was I ever in danger?  Am I safe now?  I don’t know.  I can’t tell.  No!  All this seems an abominable farce.”

There was that in his tone which made his wife continue to look at him with awakened interest.  It was obvious that he suffered from a distress which was not the effect of fear; and Mrs. Travers’ face expressed real concern till he added in a freezing manner:  “The question, however, is as to your discretion.”

She leaned back again in the chair and let her hands rest quietly in her lap.  “Would you have preferred me to remain outside, in the yacht, in the near neighbourhood of these wild men who captured you?  Or do you think that they, too, were got up to carry on a farce?”