“No,” said Mr. Travers.  “I had just then pulled out my watch.  Of course it flew out of my hand but it hung by the chain.  Somebody trampled on it.  The hands are broken off short.  It keeps on ticking but I can’t tell the time.  It’s absurd.  Most provoking.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked d’Alcacer, “that you have been winding it up every evening?”

Mr. Travers looked up from his bedstead and he also seemed surprised.  “Why!  I suppose I have.”  He kept silent for a while.  “It isn’t so much blind habit as you may think.  My habits are the outcome of strict method.  I had to order my life methodically.  You know very well, my dear d’Alcacer, that without strict method I would not have been able to get through my work and would have had no time at all for social duties, which, of course, are of very great importance.  I may say that, materially, method has been the foundation of my success in public life.  There were never any empty moments in my day.  And now this! . . .”  He looked all round the Cage. . . .  “Where’s my wife?” he asked.

“I was talking to her only a moment ago,” answered d’Alcacer.  “I don’t know the time.  My watch is on board the yacht; but it isn’t late, you know.”

Mr. Travers flung off with unwonted briskness the light cotton sheet which covered him.  He buttoned hastily the tunic which he had unfastened before lying down, and just as d’Alcacer was expecting him to swing his feet to the deck impetuously, he lay down again on the pillow and remained perfectly still.

D’Alcacer waited awhile and then began to pace the Cage.  After a couple of turns he stopped and said, gently: 

“I am afraid, Travers, you are not very well.”

“I don’t know what illness is,” answered the voice from the pillow to the great relief of d’Alcacer who really had not expected an answer.  “Good health is a great asset in public life.  Illness may make you miss a unique opportunity.  I was never ill.”

All this came out deadened in tone, as if the speaker’s face had been buried in the pillow.  D’Alcacer resumed his pacing.

“I think I asked you where my wife was,” said the muffled voice.

With great presence of mind d’Alcacer kept on pacing the Cage as if he had not heard.—­“You know, I think she is mad,” went on the muffled voice.  “Unless I am.”

Again d’Alcacer managed not to interrupt his regular pacing.  “Do you know what I think?” he said, abruptly.  “I think, Travers, that you don’t want to talk about her.  I think that you don’t want to talk about anything.  And to tell you the truth I don’t want to, either.”

D’Alcacer caught a faint sigh from the pillow and at the same time saw a small, dim flame appear outside the Cage.  And still he kept on his pacing.  Mrs. Travers and Lingard coming out of the deckhouse stopped just outside the door and Lingard stood the deck-lamp on its roof.  They were too far from d’Alcacer to be heard, but he could make them out:  Mrs. Travers, as straight as an arrow, and the heavy bulk of the man who faced her with a lowered head.  He saw it in profile against the light and as if deferential in its slight droop.  They were looking straight at each other.  Neither of them made the slightest gesture.