“You are terrifying,” he said after watching the movement of her fingers for a while.

“Yes . . . ?” she accentuated interrogatively.

“You have the awfulness of the predestined.  You, too, are the prey of dreams.”

“Not of the Moors, then,” she uttered, calmly, beginning the other plait.  D’Alcacer followed the operation to the end.  Close against her, her diaphanous shadow on the muslin reproduced her slightest movements.  D’Alcacer turned his eyes away.

“No!  No barbarian shall touch you.  Because if it comes to that I believe he would be capable of killing you himself.”

A minute elapsed before he stole a glance in her direction.  She was leaning back again, her hands had fallen on her lap and her head with a plait of hair on each side of her face, her head incredibly changed in character and suggesting something medieval, ascetic, drooped dreamily on her breast.

D’Alcacer waited, holding his breath.  She didn’t move.  In the dim gleam of jewelled clasps, the faint sheen of gold embroideries and the shimmer of silks, she was like a figure in a faded painting.  Only her neck appeared dazzlingly white in the smoky redness of the light.  D’Alcacer’s wonder approached a feeling of awe.  He was on the point of moving away quietly when Mrs. Travers, without stirring in the least, let him hear the words: 

“I have told him that every day seemed more difficult to live.  Don’t you see how impossible this is?”

D’Alcacer glanced rapidly across the Cage where Mr. Travers seemed to be asleep all in a heap and presenting a ruffled appearance like a sick bird.  Nothing was distinct of him but the bald patch on the top of his head.

“Yes,” he murmured, “it is most unfortunate. . . .  I understand your anxiety, Mrs. Travers, but . . .”

“I am frightened,” she said.

He reflected a moment.  “What answer did you get?” he asked, softly.

“The answer was:  ‘Patience.’”

D’Alcacer laughed a little.—­“You may well laugh,” murmured Mrs. Travers in a tone of anguish.—­“That’s why I did,” he whispered.  “Patience!  Didn’t he see the horror of it?”—­“I don’t know.  He walked away,” said Mrs. Travers.  She looked immovably at her hands clasped in her lap, and then with a burst of distress, “Mr. d’Alcacer, what is going to happen?”—­“Ah, you are asking yourself the question at last. That will happen which cannot be avoided; and perhaps you know best what it is.”—­“No.  I am still asking myself what he will do.”—­“Ah, that is not for me to know,” declared d’Alcacer.  “I can’t tell you what he will do, but I know what will happen to him.”—­“To him, you say!  To him!” she cried.—­“He will break his heart,” said d’Alcacer, distinctly, bending a little over the chair with a slight gasp at his own audacity—­and waited.

“Croyez-vous?” came at last from Mrs. Travers in an accent so coldly languid that d’Alcacer felt a shudder run down his spine.