it has not been made up to
you since. Surely you have only to make a sign. A woman like you."

"You think I could frighten the whole world on to its knees?"

"No, not frighten." The suggestion of a laugh in the deadened voice
passed off in a catch of the breath. Then he was heard beginning
soberly: "Your husband. . . ." He hesitated a little and she took the
opportunity to say coldly:

"His name is Mr. Travers."

Lingard didn't know how to take it. He imagined himself to have been
guilty of some sort of presumption. But how on earth was he to call the
man? After all he was her husband. That idea was disagreeable to him
because the man was also inimical in a particularly unreasonable and
galling manner. At the same time he was aware that he didn't care a
bit for his enmity and had an idea that he would not have cared for his
friendship either. And suddenly he felt very much annoyed.

"Yes. That's the man I mean," he said in a contemptuous tone. "I don't
particularly like the name and I am sure I don't want to talk about him
more than I can help. If he hadn't been your husband I wouldn't have put
up with his manners for an hour. Do you know what would have happened to
him if he hadn't been your husband?"

"No," said Mrs. Travers. "Do you, Captain Lingard?"

"Not exactly," he admitted. "Something he wouldn't have liked, you may
be sure."

"While of course he likes this very much," she observed. Lingard gave an
abrupt laugh.

"I don't think it's in my power to do anything that he would like," he
said in a serious tone. "Forgive me my frankness, Mrs. Travers, but he
makes it very difficult sometimes for me to keep civil. Whatever I have
had to put up with in life I have never had to put up with contempt."

"I quite believe that," said Mrs. Travers. "Don't your friends call you
King Tom?"

"Nobody that I care for. I have no friends. Oh, yes, they call me
that . . ."

"You have no friends?"

"Not I," he said with decision. "A man like me has no chums."

"It's quite possible," murmured Mrs. Travers to herself.

"No, not even Jorgenson. Old crazy Jorgenson. He calls me King Tom, too.
You see what that's worth."

"Yes, I see. Or rather I have heard. That poor man has no tone, and so
much depends on that. Now suppose I were to call you King Tom now
and then between ourselves," Mrs. Travers' voice proposed, distantly
tentative in the night that invested her person with a colourless
vagueness of form.

She wa