“How it must have jarred on your sense of reality,” said Mrs. Travers, still not looking at him.  “You don’t remember the name of the opera?”

“No.  I never troubled my head about it.  We—­our lot never did.”

“I won’t ask you what the story was like.  It must have appeared to you like the very defiance of all truth.  Would real people go singing through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?”

“These people didn’t always sing for joy,” said Lingard, simply.  “I don’t know much about fairy tales.”

“They are mostly about princesses,” murmured Mrs. Travers.

Lingard didn’t quite hear.  He bent his ear for a moment but she wasn’t looking at him and he didn’t ask her to repeat her remark.  “Fairy tales are for children, I believe,” he said.  “But that story with music I am telling you of, Mrs. Travers, was not a tale for children.  I assure you that of the few shows I have seen that one was the most real to me.  More real than anything in life.”

Mrs. Travers, remembering the fatal inanity of most opera librettos, was touched by these words as if there had been something pathetic in this readiness of response; as if she had heard a starved man talking of the delight of a crust of dry bread.  “I suppose you forgot yourself in that story, whatever it was,” she remarked in a detached tone.

“Yes, it carried me away.  But I suppose you know the feeling.”

“No.  I never knew anything of the kind, not even when I was a chit of a girl.”  Lingard seemed to accept this statement as an assertion of superiority.  He inclined his head slightly.  Moreover, she might have said what she liked.  What pleased him most was her not looking at him; for it enabled him to contemplate with perfect freedom the curve of her cheek, her small ear half hidden by the clear mesh of fine hair, the fascination of her uncovered neck.  And her whole person was an impossible, an amazing and solid marvel which somehow was not so much convincing to the eye as to something within him that was apparently independent of his senses.  Not even for a moment did he think of her as remote.  Untouchable—­possibly!  But remote—­no.  Whether consciously or unconsciously he took her spiritually for granted.  It was materially that she was a wonder of the sort that is at the same time familiar and sacred.

“No,” Mrs. Travers began again, abruptly.  “I never forgot myself in a story.  It was not in me.  I have not even been able to forget myself on that morning on shore which was part of my own story.”

“You carried yourself first rate,” said Lingard, smiling at the nape of her neck, her ear, the film of escaped hair, the modelling of the corner of her eye.  He could see the flutter of the dark eyelashes:  and the delicate flush on her cheek had rather the effect of scent than of colour.

“You approved of my behaviour.”

“Just right, I tell you.  My word, weren’t they all struck of a heap when they made out what you were.”