He didn’t take a favourable view of the position but he considered Mrs. Travers’ statement about operas and dresses as a warning to keep off the subject.  For this reason he remained silent through the meal.

When the bustle of clearing away the table was over he strolled toward Mrs. Travers and remarked very quietly: 

“I think that in keeping away from us this evening the Man of Fate was well inspired.  We dined like a lot of Carthusian monks.”

“You allude to our silence?”

“It was most scrupulous.  If we had taken an eternal vow we couldn’t have kept it better.”

“Did you feel bored?”

“Pas du tout,” d’Alcacer assured her with whimsical gravity.  “I felt nothing.  I sat in a state of blessed vacuity.  I believe I was the happiest of us three.  Unless you, too, Mrs. Travers. . . .”

“It’s absolutely no use your fishing for my thoughts, Mr. d’Alcacer.  If I were to let you see them you would be appalled.”

“Thoughts really are but a shape of feelings.  Let me congratulate you on the impassive mask you can put on those horrors you say you nurse in your breast.  It was impossible to tell anything by your face.”

“You will always say flattering things.”

“Madame, my flatteries come from the very bottom of my heart.  I have given up long ago all desire to please.  And I was not trying to get at your thoughts.  Whatever else you may expect from me you may count on my absolute respect for your privacy.  But I suppose with a mask such as you can make for yourself you really don’t care.  The Man of Fate, I noticed, is not nearly as good at it as you are.”

“What a pretentious name.  Do you call him by it to his face, Mr. d’Alcacer?”

“No, I haven’t the cheek,” confessed d’Alcacer, equably.  “And, besides, it’s too momentous for daily use.  And he is so simple that he might mistake it for a joke and nothing could be further from my thoughts.  Mrs. Travers, I will confess to you that I don’t feel jocular in the least.  But what can he know about people of our sort?  And when I reflect how little people of our sort can know of such a man I am quite content to address him as Captain Lingard.  It’s common and soothing and most respectable and satisfactory; for Captain is the most empty of all titles.  What is a Captain?  Anybody can be a Captain; and for Lingard it’s a name like any other.  Whereas what he deserves is something special, significant, and expressive, that would match his person, his simple and romantic person.”

He perceived that Mrs. Travers was looking at him intently.  They hastened to turn their eyes away from each other.

“He would like your appreciation,” Mrs. Travers let drop negligently.

“I am afraid he would despise it.”

“Despise it!  Why, that sort of thing is the very breath of his nostrils.”

“You seem to understand him, Mrs. Travers.  Women have a singular capacity for understanding.  I mean subjects that interest them; because when their imagination is stimulated they are not afraid of letting it go.  A man is more mistrustful of himself, but women are born much more reckless.  They push on and on under the protection of secrecy and silence, and the greater the obscurity of what they wish to explore the greater their courage.”