“How do you or I know what is possible?” she whispered with a strange scorn.  “You wouldn’t dare guess.  But I tell you that every day that passes is more impossible to me than the day before.”

The passion of that whisper went like a stab into his breast.  “What am I to tell you?” he murmured, as if with despair.  “Remember that every sunset makes it a day less.  Do you think I want you here?”

A bitter little laugh floated out into the starlight.  Mrs. Travers heard Lingard move suddenly away from her side.  She didn’t change her pose by a hair’s breadth.  Presently she heard d’Alcacer coming out of the Cage.  His cultivated voice asked half playfully: 

“Have you had a satisfactory conversation?  May I be told something of it?”

“Mr. d’Alcacer, you are curious.”

“Well, in our position, I confess. . . .  You are our only refuge, remember.”

“You want to know what we were talking about,” said Mrs. Travers, altering slowly her position so as to confront d’Alcacer whose face was almost undistinguishable.  “Oh, well, then, we talked about opera, the realities and illusions of the stage, of dresses, of people’s names, and things of that sort.”

“Nothing of importance,” he said courteously.  Mrs. Travers moved forward and he stepped to one side.  Inside the Cage two Malay hands were hanging round lanterns, the light of which fell on Mr. Travers’ bowed head as he sat in his chair.

When they were all assembled for the evening meal Jorgenson strolled up from nowhere in particular as his habit was, and speaking through the muslin announced that Captain Lingard begged to be excused from joining the company that evening.  Then he strolled away.  From that moment till they got up from the table and the camp bedsteads were brought in not twenty words passed between the members of the party within the net.  The strangeness of their situation made all attempts to exchange ideas very arduous; and apart from that each had thoughts which it was distinctly useless to communicate to the others.  Mr. Travers had abandoned himself to his sense of injury.  He did not so much brood as rage inwardly in a dull, dispirited way.  The impossibility of asserting himself in any manner galled his very soul.  D’Alcacer was extremely puzzled.  Detached in a sense from the life of men perhaps as much even as Jorgenson himself, he took yet a reasonable interest in the course of events and had not lost all his sense of self-preservation.  Without being able to appreciate the exact values of the situation he was not one of those men who are ever completely in the dark in any given set of circumstances.  Without being humorous he was a good-humoured man.  His habitual, gentle smile was a true expression.  More of a European than of a Spaniard he had that truly aristocratic nature which is inclined to credit every honest man with something of its own nobility and in its judgment is altogether independent of class