of course, since, but he had not been in touch with them except visually and they had not been English children.  Her childhood, like his own, had been passed in England, and that very fact made it almost impossible for him to imagine it.  He could not even tell whether it was in town or in the country, or whether as a child she had even seen the sea.  And how could a child of that kind be objectionable?  But he remembered that a child disapproved of could be very unhappy, and he said: 

“I am sorry.”

Mrs. Travers laughed a little.  Within the muslin cage forms had turned to blurred shadows.  Amongst them the form of d’Alcacer arose and moved.  The systematic or else the morbid dumbness of Mr. Travers bored and exasperated him, though, as a matter of fact, that gentleman’s speeches had never had the power either to entertain or to soothe his mind.

“It’s very nice of you.  You have a great capacity for sympathy, but after all I am not certain on which side your sympathies lie.  With me, or those much-tried people,” said Mrs. Travers.

“With the child,” said Lingard, disregarding the bantering tone.  “A child can have a very bad time of it all to itself.”

“What can you know of it?” she asked.

“I have my own feelings,” he answered in some surprise.

Mrs. Travers, with her back to him, was covered with confusion.  Neither could she depict to herself his childhood as if he, too, had come into the world in the fullness of his strength and his purpose.  She discovered a certain naiveness in herself and laughed a little.  He made no sound.

“Don’t be angry,” she said.  “I wouldn’t dream of laughing at your feelings.  Indeed your feelings are the most serious thing that ever came in my way.  I couldn’t help laughing at myself—­at a funny discovery I made.”

“In the days of your childhood?” she heard Lingard’s deep voice asking after a pause.

“Oh, no.  Ages afterward.  No child could have made that discovery.  Do you know the greatest difference there is between us?  It is this:  That I have been living since my childhood in front of a show and that I never have been taken in for a moment by its tinsel and its noise or by anything that went on on the stage.  Do you understand what I mean, Captain Lingard?”

There was a moment of silence.  “What does it matter?  We are no children now.”  There was an infinite gentleness in Lingard’s deep tones.  “But if you have been unhappy then don’t tell me that it has not been made up to you since.  Surely you have only to make a sign.  A woman like you.”

“You think I could frighten the whole world on to its knees?”

“No, not frighten.”  The suggestion of a laugh in the deadened voice passed off in a catch of the breath.  Then he was heard beginning soberly:  “Your husband. . . .”  He hesitated a little and she took the opportunity to say coldly: 

“His name is Mr. Travers.”