From time to time he interrupted himself to ask, confidently, as if
he had been speaking to an old friend, "What would you have done?" and
hurried on without pausing for approval.

It struck her that there was a great passion in all this, the beauty of
an implanted faculty of affection that had found itself, its immediate
need of an object and the way of expansion; a tenderness expressed
violently; a tenderness that could only be satisfied by backing human
beings against their own destiny. Perhaps her hatred of convention,
trammelling the frankness of her own impulses, had rendered her more
alert to perceive what is intrinsically great and profound within the
forms of human folly, so simple and so infinitely varied according to
the region of the earth and to the moment of time.

What of it that the narrator was only a roving seaman; the kingdom of
the jungle, the men of the forest, the lives obscure! That simple soul
was possessed by the greatness of the idea; there was nothing sordid in
its flaming impulses. When she once understood that, the story appealed
to the audacity of her thoughts, and she became so charmed with what she
heard that she forgot where she was. She forgot that she was personally
close to that tale which she saw detached, far away from her, truth or
fiction, presented in picturesque speech, real only by the response of
her emotion.

Lingard paused. In the cessation of the impassioned murmur she began to
reflect. And at first it was only an oppressive notion of there being
some significance that really mattered in this man's story. That
mattered to her. For the first time the shadow of danger and death
crossed her mind. Was that the significance? Suddenly, in a flash of
acute discernment, she saw herself involved helplessly in that story, as
one is involved in a natural cataclysm.

He was speaking again. He had not been silent more than a minute. It
seemed to Mrs. Travers that years had elapsed, so different now was the
effect of his words. Her mind was agitated as if his coming to speak and
confide in her had been a tremendous occurrence. It was a fact of her
own existence; it was part of the story also. This was the disturbing
thought. She heard him pronounce several names: Belarab, Daman, Tengga,
Ningrat. These belonged now to her life and she was appalled to find she
was unable to connect these names with any human appearance. They stood
out alone, as if written on the night; they took on a