Lingard didn’t know how to take it.  He imagined himself to have been guilty of some sort of presumption.  But how on earth was he to call the man?  After all he was her husband.  That idea was disagreeable to him because the man was also inimical in a particularly unreasonable and galling manner.  At the same time he was aware that he didn’t care a bit for his enmity and had an idea that he would not have cared for his friendship either.  And suddenly he felt very much annoyed.

“Yes.  That’s the man I mean,” he said in a contemptuous tone.  “I don’t particularly like the name and I am sure I don’t want to talk about him more than I can help.  If he hadn’t been your husband I wouldn’t have put up with his manners for an hour.  Do you know what would have happened to him if he hadn’t been your husband?”

“No,” said Mrs. Travers.  “Do you, Captain Lingard?”

“Not exactly,” he admitted.  “Something he wouldn’t have liked, you may be sure.”

“While of course he likes this very much,” she observed.  Lingard gave an abrupt laugh.

“I don’t think it’s in my power to do anything that he would like,” he said in a serious tone.  “Forgive me my frankness, Mrs. Travers, but he makes it very difficult sometimes for me to keep civil.  Whatever I have had to put up with in life I have never had to put up with contempt.”

“I quite believe that,” said Mrs. Travers.  “Don’t your friends call you King Tom?”

“Nobody that I care for.  I have no friends.  Oh, yes, they call me that . . .”

“You have no friends?”

“Not I,” he said with decision.  “A man like me has no chums.”

“It’s quite possible,” murmured Mrs. Travers to herself.

“No, not even Jorgenson.  Old crazy Jorgenson.  He calls me King Tom, too.  You see what that’s worth.”

“Yes, I see.  Or rather I have heard.  That poor man has no tone, and so much depends on that.  Now suppose I were to call you King Tom now and then between ourselves,” Mrs. Travers’ voice proposed, distantly tentative in the night that invested her person with a colourless vagueness of form.

She waited in the stillness, her elbows on the rail and her face in her hands as if she had already forgotten what she had said.  She heard at her elbow the deep murmur of: 

“Let’s hear you say it.”

She never moved the least bit.  The sombre lagoon sparkled faintly with the reflection of the stars.

“Oh, yes, I will let you hear it,” she said into the starlit space in a voice of unaccented gentleness which changed subtly as she went on.  “I hope you will never regret that you came out of your friendless mystery to speak to me, King Tom.  How many days ago it was!  And here is another day gone.  Tell me how many more of them there must be?  Of these blinding days and nights without a sound.”

“Be patient,” he murmured.  “Don’t ask me for the impossible.”