“You talk like a pagan.”

It was a very strong condemnation which apparently Mrs. Travers had failed to hear for she pursued with animation: 

“But really, you can’t expect me to meditate on it all the time or shut myself up here and mourn the circumstances from morning to night.  It would be morbid.  Let us go on deck.”

“And you look simply heathenish in this costume,” Mr. Travers went on as though he had not been interrupted, and with an accent of deliberate disgust.

Her heart was heavy but everything he said seemed to force the tone of levity on to her lips.  “As long as I don’t look like a guy,” she remarked, negligently, and then caught the direction of his lurid stare which as a matter of fact was fastened on her bare feet.  She checked herself, “Oh, yes, if you prefer it I will put on my stockings.  But you know I must be very careful of them.  It’s the only pair I have here.  I have washed them this morning in that bathroom which is built over the stern.  They are now drying over the rail just outside.  Perhaps you will be good enough to pass them to me when you go on deck.”

Mr. Travers spun round and went on deck without a word.  As soon as she was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a gesture of distress which relieved her by its sincerity.  The measured footsteps of two men came to her plainly from the deck, rhythmic and double with a suggestion of tranquil and friendly intercourse.  She distinguished particularly the footfalls of the man whose life’s orbit was most remote from her own.  And yet the orbits had cut!  A few days ago she could not have even conceived of his existence, and now he was the man whose footsteps, it seemed to her, her ears could single unerringly in the tramp of a crowd.  It was, indeed, a fabulous thing.  In the half light of her over-heated shelter she let an irresolute, frightened smile pass off her lips before she, too, went on deck.

II

An ingeniously constructed framework of light posts and thin laths occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the Emma.  The four walls of that airy structure were made of muslin.  It was comparatively lofty.  A door-like arrangement of light battens filled with calico was further protected by a system of curtains calculated to baffle the pursuit of mosquitoes that haunted the shores of the lagoon in great singing clouds from sunset till sunrise.  A lot of fine mats covered the deck space within the transparent shelter devised by Lingard and Jorgenson to make Mrs. Travers’ existence possible during the time when the fate of the two men, and indeed probably of everybody else on board the Emma, had to hang in the balance.  Very soon Lingard’s unbidden and fatal guests had learned the trick of stepping in and out of the place quickly.  Mr. d’Alcacer performed the feat without apparent haste, almost nonchalantly, yet as well as anybody.  It was generally conceded