'He is a very pleasant man,' murmured Lingard, absently. 'But he says funny things sometimes. He inquired the other day if there were any playing cards on board, and when I asked him if he liked card-playing, just for something to say, he told me with that queer smile of his that he had read a story of some people condemned to death who passed the time before execution playing card games with their guards.'
'And what did you say?'
'I told him that there were probably cards on board somewhere—Jorgenson would know. Then I asked him whether he looked on me as a gaoler. He was quite startled and sorry for what he said.'
'It wasn't very kind of you, Captain Lingard.'
'It slipped out awkwardly and we made it up with a laugh.'
Mrs. Travers leaned her elbows on the rail and put her head into her hands. Every attitude of that woman surprised Lingard by its enchanting effect upon himself. He sighed, and the silence lasted for a long while.
'I wish I had understood every word that was said that morning.'
'That morning,' repeated Lingard. 'What morning do you mean?'
'I mean the morning when I walked out of Belarab's stockade on your arm, Captain Lingard, at the head of the procession. It seemed to me that I was walking on a splendid stage in a scene from an opera, in a gorgeous show fit to make an audience hold its breath. You can't possibly guess how unreal all this seemed, and how artificial I felt myself. An opera, you know. . . .'
'I know. I was a gold digger at one time. Some of us used to come down to Melbourne with our pockets full of money. I daresay it was poor enough to what you must have seen, but once I went to a show like that. It was a story acted to music. All the people went singing through it right to the very end.'
'How it must have jarred on your sense of reality,' said Mrs. Travers, still not looking at him. 'You don't remember the name of the opera?'
'No. I never troubled my head about it. We—our lot never did.'
'I won't ask you what the story was like. It must have appeared to you like the very defiance of all truth. Would real people go singing through their life anywhere except in a fairy tale?'
'These people didn't always sing for joy,' said Lingard, simply. 'I don't know much about fairy tales.'
'They are mostly about princesses,' murmured Mrs. Travers.
Lingard didn't quite hear. He bent his ear for a moment but she wasn't looking at him and he didn't ask her to repeat her remark. 'Fairy tales are for children, I believe,' he said. 'But that story with music I am telling you of, Mrs. Travers, was not a tale for children. I assure you that of the few shows I have seen that one was the most real to me. More real than anything in life.'
Mrs. Travers, remembering the fatal inanity of most opera librettos, was touched by these words as if there had been something pathetic in this readiness of response; as if she had heard a starved man talking of the delight of a crust of dry bread. 'I suppose you forgot yourself in that story, whatever it was,' she remarked in a detached tone.
'Yes, it carried me away. But I suppose you know the feeling.'
'No. I never knew anything of the kind, not even when I was a chit of a girl.' Lingard seemed to accept this statement as an assertion of superiority. He inclined his head slightly. Moreover, she might have said what she liked. What pleased him most was her not looking at him; for it enabled him to contemplate with perfect freedom the curve of her cheek, her small ear half hidden by the clear mesh of fine hair, the fascination of her uncovered neck. And her whole person was an impossible, an amazing and solid marvel which somehow was not so much convincing to the eye as to something within him that was apparently independent of his senses. Not even for a moment did he think of her as remote. Untouchable—possibly! But remote—no. Whether consciously or unconsciously he took her spiritually for granted. It was materially that she was a wonder of the sort that is at the same time familiar and sacred.
'No,' Mrs. Travers began again, abruptly. 'I never forgot myself in a story. It was not in me. I have not even been able to forget myself on that morning on shore which was part of my own story.'
'You carried yourself first rate,' said Lingard, smiling at the nape of her neck, her ear, the film of escaped hair, the modelling of the corner of her eye. He could see the flutter of the dark eyelashes: and the delicate flush on her cheek had rather the effect of scent than of colour.
'You approved of my behaviour.'
'Just right, I tell you. My word, weren't they all struck of a heap when they made out what you were.'
'I ought to feel flattered. I will confess to you that I felt only half disguised and was half angry and wholly uncomfortable. What helped me, I suppose, was that I wanted to please. . . .'
'I don't mean to say that they were exactly pleased,' broke in Lingard, conscientiously. 'They were startled more.'
'I wanted to please you,' dropped Mrs. Travers, negligently. A faint, hoarse, and impatient call of a bird was heard from the woods as if calling to the oncoming night. Lingard's face grew hot in the deepening dusk. The delicate lemon yellow and ethereal green tints had vanished from the sky and the red glow darkened menacingly. The sun had set behind the black pall of the forest, no longer edged with a line of gold. 'Yes, I was absurdly self- conscious,' continued Mrs. Travers in a conversational tone. 'And it was the effect of these clothes that you made me put on over some of my European—I almost said disguise; because you know in the present more perfect costume I feel curiously at home; and yet I can't say that these things really fit me. The sleeves of this silk under- jacket are rather tight. My shoulders feel bound, too, and as to the sarong it is scandalously short. According to rule it should have been long enough to fall over my feet. But I like freedom of movement. I have had very little of what I liked in life.'
'I can hardly believe that,' said Lingard. 'If it wasn't for your saying so. . . .'
'I wouldn't say so to everybody,' she said, turning her head for a moment to Lingard and turning it away again to the dusk which seemed to come floating over the black lagoon. Far away in its depth a couple of feeble lights twinkled; it was impossible to say whether on the shore or on the edge of the more distant forest. Overhead the stars were beginning to come out, but faint yet, as if too remote to be reflected in the lagoon. Only to the west a
