“You are the most generous of women,” he said.  He bent over her.  Her eyes were wide open.  Her lips felt cold.  It did not shock him.  After he stood up he remained near her.  Heat is a consuming thing, but she with her cold lips seemed to him indestructible—­and, perhaps, immortal!

Again he stooped, but this time it was only to kiss the fringe of her head scarf.  Then he turned away to meet the three men, who, coming round the corner of the hut containing the prisoners, were approaching him with measured steps.  They desired his presence in the Council room.  Belarab was awake.

They also expressed their satisfaction at finding the white man awake, because Belarab wanted to impart to him information of the greatest importance.  It seemed to Lingard that he had been awake ever since he could remember.  It was as to being alive that he felt not so sure.  He had no doubt of his existence; but was this life—­this profound indifference, this strange contempt for what his eyes could see, this distaste for words, this unbelief in the importance of things and men?  He tried to regain possession of himself, his old self which had things to do, words to speak as well as to hear.  But it was too difficult.  He was seduced away by the tense feeling of existence far superior to the mere consciousness of life, and which in its immensity of contradictions, delight, dread, exultation and despair could not be faced and yet was not to be evaded.  There was no peace in it.  But who wanted peace?  Surrender was better, the dreadful ease of slack limbs in the sweep of an enormous tide and in a divine emptiness of mind.  If this was existence then he knew that he existed.  And he knew that the woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without movement, without heat!  Indestructible—­and, perhaps, immortal!

VII

With the sublime indifference of a man who has had a glimpse through the open doors of Paradise and is no longer careful of mere life, Lingard had followed Belarab’s anxious messengers.  The stockade was waking up in a subdued resonance of voices.  Men were getting up from the ground, fires were being rekindled.  Draped figures flitted in the mist amongst the buildings; and through the mat wall of a bamboo house Lingard heard the feeble wailing of a child.  A day of mere life was beginning; but in the Chief’s great Council room several wax candles and a couple of cheap European lamps kept the dawn at bay, while the morning mist which could not be kept out made a faint reddish halo round every flame.