“There is nothing to tell you till Rajah Hassim and his sister Immada return with some news,” Lingard answered in the same tone.  “Has my friend succeeded?  Will Belarab listen to any arguments?  Will he consent to come out of his shell?  Is he on his way back?  I wish I knew! . . .  Not a whisper comes from there!  He may have started two days ago and he may be now near the outskirts of the Settlement.  Or he may have gone into camp half way down, from some whim or other; or he may be already arrived for all I know.  We should not have seen him.  The road from the hills does not lead along the beach.”

He snatched nervously at the long glass and directed it at the dark stockade.  The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green lying across the lower sky.  Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into the darkened blue overhead.  The shades of the evening deepened over the lagoon, clung to the sides of the Emma and to the forms of the further shore.  Lingard laid the glass down.

“Mr. d’Alcacer, too, seems to have been avoiding me,” said Mrs. Travers.  “You are on very good terms with him, Captain Lingard.”

“He is a very pleasant man,” murmured Lingard, absently.  “But he says funny things sometimes.  He inquired the other day if there were any playing cards on board, and when I asked him if he liked card-playing, just for something to say, he told me with that queer smile of his that he had read a story of some people condemned to death who passed the time before execution playing card games with their guards.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him that there were probably cards on board somewhere—­Jorgenson would know.  Then I asked him whether he looked on me as a gaoler.  He was quite startled and sorry for what he said.”

“It wasn’t very kind of you, Captain Lingard.”

“It slipped out awkwardly and we made it up with a laugh.”

Mrs. Travers leaned her elbows on the rail and put her head into her hands.  Every attitude of that woman surprised Lingard by its enchanting effect upon himself.  He sighed, and the silence lasted for a long while.

“I wish I had understood every word that was said that morning.”

“That morning,” repeated Lingard.  “What morning do you mean?”

“I mean the morning when I walked out of Belarab’s stockade on your arm, Captain Lingard, at the head of the procession.  It seemed to me that I was walking on a splendid stage in a scene from an opera, in a gorgeous show fit to make an audience hold its breath.  You can’t possibly guess how unreal all this seemed, and how artificial I felt myself.  An opera, you know. . . .”

“I know.  I was a gold digger at one time.  Some of us used to come down to Melbourne with our pockets full of money.  I daresay it was poor enough to what you must have seen, but once I went to a show like that.  It was a story acted to music.  All the people went singing through it right to the very end.”