on board the Emma and was disposing them about the decks to watch the lagoon in all directions.  On calling Mrs. Travers out of the Cage Lingard was, in the midst of his mental struggle, conscious of a certain satisfaction in taking her away from d’Alcacer.  He couldn’t spare any of her attention to any other man, not the least crumb of her time, not the least particle of her thought!  He needed it all.  To see it withdrawn from him for the merest instant was irritating—­seemed a disaster.

D’Alcacer, left alone, wondered at the imperious tone of Lingard’s call.  To this observer of shades the fact seemed considerable.  “Sheer nerves,” he concluded, to himself.  “The man is overstrung.  He must have had some sort of shock.”  But what could it be—­he wondered to himself.  In the tense stagnation of those days of waiting the slightest tremor had an enormous importance.  D’Alcacer did not seek his camp bedstead.  He didn’t even sit down.  With the palms of his hands against the edge of the table he leaned back against it.  In that negligent attitude he preserved an alert mind which for a moment wondered whether Mrs. Travers had not spoiled Lingard a little.  Yet in the suddenness of the forced association, where, too, d’Alcacer was sure there was some moral problem in the background, he recognized the extreme difficulty of weighing accurately the imperious demands against the necessary reservations, the exact proportions of boldness and caution.  And d’Alcacer admired upon the whole Mrs. Travers’ cleverness.

There could be no doubt that she had the situation in her hands.  That, of course, did not mean safety.  She had it in her hands as one may hold some highly explosive and uncertain compound.  D’Alcacer thought of her with profound sympathy and with a quite unselfish interest.  Sometimes in a street we cross the path of personalities compelling sympathy and wonder but for all that we don’t follow them home.  D’Alcacer refrained from following Mrs. Travers any further.  He had become suddenly aware that Mr. Travers was sitting up on his camp bedstead.  He must have done it very suddenly.  Only a moment before he had appeared plunged in the deepest slumber, and the stillness for a long time now had been perfectly unbroken.  D’Alcacer was startled enough for an exclamation and Mr. Travers turned his head slowly in his direction.  D’Alcacer approached the bedstead with a certain reluctance.

“Awake?” he said.

“A sudden chill,” said Mr. Travers.  “But I don’t feel cold now.  Strange!  I had the impression of an icy blast.”

“Ah!” said d’Alcacer.

“Impossible, of course!” went on Mr. Travers.  “This stagnating air never moves.  It clings odiously to one.  What time is it?”

“Really, I don’t know.”

“The glass of my watch was smashed on that night when we were so treacherously assailed by the savages on the sandbank,” grumbled Mr. Travers.

“I must say I was never so surprised in my life,” confessed d’Alcacer.  “We had stopped and I was lighting a cigar, you may remember.”