didn’t matter.  They could not matter if the world of his creation were to go to pieces.  He said nothing of that to Mrs. Travers but busied himself in giving her the means to alter her personal appearance.  It was then that the sea-chest in the deckhouse was opened for the first time before the interested Mrs. Travers who had followed him inside.  Lingard handed to her a Malay woman’s light cotton coat with jewelled clasps to put over her European dress.  It covered half of her yachting skirt.  Mrs. Travers obeyed him without comment.  He pulled out a long and wide scarf of white silk embroidered heavily on the edges and ends, and begged her to put it over her head and arrange the ends so as to muffle her face, leaving little more than her eyes exposed to view.—­“We are going amongst a lot of Mohammedans,” he explained.—­“I see.  You want me to look respectable,” she jested.—­“I assure you, Mrs. Travers,” he protested, earnestly, “that most of the people there and certainly all the great men have never seen a white woman in their lives.  But perhaps you would like better one of those other scarves?  There are three in there.”—­“No, I like this one well enough.  They are all very gorgeous.  I see that the Princess is to be sent back to her land with all possible splendour.  What a thoughtful man you are, Captain Lingard.  That child will be touched by your generosity. . . .  Will I do like this?”

“Yes,” said Lingard, averting his eyes.  Mrs. Travers followed him into the boat where the Malays stared in silence while Jorgenson, stiff and angular, gave no sign of life, not even so much as a movement of the eyes.  Lingard settled her in the stern sheets and sat down by her side.  The ardent sunshine devoured all colours.  The boat swam forward on the glare heading for the strip of coral beach dazzling like a crescent of metal raised to a white heat.  They landed.  Gravely, Jorgenson opened above Mrs. Travers’ head a big white cotton parasol and she advanced between the two men, dazed, as if in a dream and having no other contact with the earth but through the soles of her feet.  Everything was still, empty, incandescent, and fantastic.  Then when the gate of the stockade was thrown open she perceived an expectant and still multitude of bronze figures draped in coloured stuffs.  They crowded the patches of shade under the three lofty forest trees left within the enclosure between the sun-smitten empty spaces of hard-baked ground.  The broad blades of the spears decorated with crimson tufts of horsehair had a cool gleam under the outspread boughs.  To the left a group of buildings on piles with long verandahs and immense roofs towered high in the air above the heads of the crowd, and seemed to float in the glare, looking much less substantial than their heavy shadows.  Lingard, pointing to one of the smallest, said in an undertone, “I lived there for a fortnight when I first came to see Belarab”; and Mrs. Travers felt more than ever as if walking