Mrs. Travers got up to see what was wanted, and returned without uttering a single word to the folding armchair by the side of the bed-place, with an envelope in her hand which she tore open in the greenish light.  Mr. Travers remained incurious but his wife handed to him an unfolded sheet of paper which he condescended to hold up to his eyes.  It contained only one line of writing.  He let the paper fall on the coverlet and went on reposing as before.  It was a sick man’s repose.  Mrs. Travers in the armchair, with her hands on the arm-rests, had a great dignity of attitude.

“I intend to go,” she declared after a time.

“You intend to go,” repeated Mr. Travers in a feeble, deliberate voice.  “Really, it doesn’t matter what you decide to do.  All this is of so little importance.  It seems to me that there can be no possible object.”

“Perhaps not,” she admitted.  “But don’t you think that the uttermost farthing should always be paid?”

Mr. Travers’ head rolled over on the pillow and gave a covertly scared look at that outspoken woman.  But it rolled back again at once and the whole man remained passive, the very embodiment of helpless exhaustion.  Mrs. Travers noticed this, and had the unexpected impression that Mr. Travers was not so ill as he looked.  “He’s making the most of it.  It’s a matter of diplomacy,” she thought.  She thought this without irony, bitterness, or disgust.  Only her heart sank a little lower and she felt that she could not remain in the cabin with that man for the rest of the evening.  For all life—­yes!  But not for that evening.

“It’s simply monstrous,” murmured the man, who was either very diplomatic or very exhausted, in a languid manner.  “There is something abnormal in you.”

Mrs. Travers got up swiftly.

“One comes across monstrous things.  But I assure you that of all the monsters that wait on what you would call a normal existence the one I dread most is tediousness.  A merciless monster without teeth or claws.  Impotent.  Horrible!”

She left the stateroom, vanishing out of it with noiseless resolution.  No power on earth could have kept her in there for another minute.  On deck she found a moonless night with a velvety tepid feeling in the air, and in the sky a mass of blurred starlight, like the tarnished tinsel of a worn-out, very old, very tedious firmament.  The usual routine of the yacht had been already resumed, the awnings had been stretched aft, a solitary round lamp had been hung as usual under the main boom.  Out of the deep gloom behind it d’Alcacer, a long, loose figure, lounged in the dim light across the deck.  D’Alcacer had got promptly in touch with the store of cigarettes he owed to the Governor General’s generosity.  A large, pulsating spark glowed, illuminating redly the design of his lips under the fine dark moustache, the tip of his nose, his lean chin.  D’Alcacer reproached himself for an unwonted light-heartedness which had somehow taken possession of him.  He had not experienced that sort of feeling for years.  Reprehensible as it was he did not want anything to disturb it.  But as he could not run away openly from Mrs. Travers he advanced to meet her.