He delighted Mrs. Travers not as a living being but like a clever sketch in colours, a vivid rendering of an artist’s vision of some soul, delicate and fierce.  His bright half-smile was extraordinary, sharp like clear steel, painfully penetrating.  Glancing right and left Mrs. Travers saw the whole courtyard smitten by the desolating fury of sunshine and peopled with shadows, their forms and colours fading in the violence of the light.  The very brown tones of roof and wall dazzled the eye.  Then Daman stepped aside.  He was no longer smiling and Mrs. Travers advanced with her hand on Lingard’s arm through a heat so potent that it seemed to have a taste, a feel, a smell of its own.  She moved on as if floating in it with Lingard’s support.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“They are following us all right,” he answered.  Lingard was so certain that the prisoners would be delivered to him on the beach that he never glanced back till, after reaching the boat, he and Mrs. Travers turned about.

The group of spearmen parted right and left, and Mr. Travers and d’Alcacer walked forward alone looking unreal and odd like their own day-ghosts.  Mr. Travers gave no sign of being aware of his wife’s presence.  It was certainly a shock to him.  But d’Alcacer advanced smiling, as if the beach were a drawing room.

With a very few paddlers the heavy old European-built boat moved slowly over the water that seemed as pale and blazing as the sky above.  Jorgenson had perched himself in the bow.  The other four white people sat in the stern sheets, the ex-prisoners side by side in the middle.  Lingard spoke suddenly.

“I want you both to understand that the trouble is not over yet.  Nothing is finished.  You are out on my bare word.”

While Lingard was speaking Mr. Travers turned his face away but d’Alcacer listened courteously.  Not another word was spoken for the rest of the way.  The two gentlemen went up the ship’s side first.  Lingard remained to help Mrs. Travers at the foot of the ladder.  She pressed his hand strongly and looking down at his upturned face: 

“This was a wonderful success,” she said.

For a time the character of his fascinated gaze did not change.  It was as if she had said nothing.  Then he whispered, admiringly, “You understand everything.”

She moved her eyes away and had to disengage her hand to which he clung for a moment, giddy, like a man falling out of the world.

III

Mrs. Travers, acutely aware of Lingard behind her, remained gazing over the lagoon.  After a time he stepped forward and placed himself beside her close to the rail.  She went on staring at the sheet of water turned to deep purple under the sunset sky.

“Why have you been avoiding me since we came back from the stockade?” she asked in a deadened voice.