“My wife has been stuffing your head with some more of her nonsense.”  Mr. Travers spoke in a voice which astonished d’Alcacer as much as the smile, a voice that was not irritable nor peevish, but had a distinct note of indulgence.  “My dear d’Alcacer, that craze has got such a hold of her that she would tell you any sort of tale.  Social impostors, mediums, fortune-tellers, charlatans of all sorts do obtain a strange influence over women.  You have seen that sort of thing yourself.  I had a talk with her before dinner.  The influence that bandit has got over her is incredible.  I really believe the fellow is half crazy himself.  They often are, you know.  I gave up arguing with her.  Now, what is it you have got to tell me?  But I warn you that I am not going to take it seriously.”

He rejected briskly the cotton sheet, put his feet to the ground and buttoned his jacket.  D’Alcacer, as he talked, became aware by the slight noise behind him that Mrs. Travers and Lingard were leaving the Cage, but he went on to the end and then waited anxiously for the answer.

“See!  She has followed him out on deck,” were Mr. Travers’ first words.  “I hope you understand that it is a mere craze.  You can’t help seeing that.  Look at her costume.  She simply has lost her head.  Luckily the world needn’t know.  But suppose that something similar had happened at home.  It would have been extremely awkward.  Oh! yes, I will come.  I will go anywhere.  I can’t stand this hulk, those people, this infernal Cage.  I believe I should fall ill if I were to remain here.”

The inward detached voice of Jorgenson made itself heard near the gangway saying:  “The boat has been waiting for this hour past, King Tom.”

“Let us make a virtue of necessity and go with a good grace,” said d’Alcacer, ready to take Mr. Travers under the arm persuasively, for he did not know what to make of that gentleman.

But Mr. Travers seemed another man.  “I am afraid, d’Alcacer, that you, too, are not very strong-minded.  I am going to take a blanket off this bedstead. . . .”  He flung it hastily over his arm and followed d’Alcacer closely.  “What I suffer mostly from, strange to say, is cold.”

Mrs. Travers and Lingard were waiting near the gangway.  To everybody’s extreme surprise Mr. Travers addressed his wife first.

“You were always laughing at people’s crazes,” was what he said, “and now you have a craze of your own.  But we won’t discuss that.”

D’Alcacer passed on, raising his cap to Mrs. Travers, and went down the ship’s side into the boat.  Jorgenson had vanished in his own manner like an exorcised ghost, and Lingard, stepping back, left husband and wife face to face.

“Did you think I was going to make a fuss?” asked Mr. Travers in a very low voice.  “I assure you I would rather go than stay here.  You didn’t think that?  You have lost all sense of reality, of probability.  I was just thinking this evening that I would rather be anywhere than here looking on at you.  At your folly. . . .”