yalty."

"What did he do?" asked Lingard.

"He loved," said Mrs. Travers, lightly. "But that's an old story." She
raised the glass to her eyes, one arm extended fully to sustain the long
tube, and Lingard forgot d'Alcacer in admiring the firmness of her pose
and the absolute steadiness of the heavy glass. She was as firm as a
rock after all those emotions and all that fatigue.

Mrs. Travers directed the glass instinctively toward the entrance of the
lagoon. The smooth water there shone like a piece of silver in the dark
frame of the forest. A black speck swept across the field of her vision.
It was some time before she could find it again and then she saw,
apparently so near as to be within reach of the voice, a small canoe
with two people in it. She saw the wet paddles rising and dipping with
a flash in the sunlight. She made out plainly the face of Immada, who
seemed to be looking straight into the big end of the telescope. The
chief and his sister, after resting under the bank for a couple of
hours in the middle of the night, had entered the lagoon and were making
straight for the hulk. They were already near enough to be perfectly
distinguishable to the naked eye if there had been anybody on board to
glance that way. But nobody was even thinking of them. They might not
have existed except perhaps in the memory of old Jorgenson. But that was
mostly busy with all the mysterious secrets of his late tomb.

Mrs. Travers lowered the glass suddenly. Lingard came out from a sort of
trance and said:

"Mr. d'Alcacer. Loved! Why shouldn't he?"

Mrs. Travers looked frankly into Lingard's gloomy eyes. "It isn't that
alone, of course," she said. "First of all he knew how to love and then.
. . . You don't know how artificial and barren certain kinds of life
can be. But Mr. d'Alcacer's life was not that. His devotion was worth
having."

"You seem to know a lot about him,'" said Lingard, enviously. "Why do
you smile?" She continued to smile at him for a little while. The long
brass tube over her shoulder shone like gold against the pale fairness
of her bare head.--"At a thought," she answered, preserving the low tone
of the conversation into which they had fallen as if their words could
have disturbed the self-absorption of Captain H. C. Jorgenson. "At the
thought that for all my long acquaintance with Mr. d'Alcacer I don't
know half as much about him as I know about you."

"Ah, that's impossible," contradicted Lingard. "Sp