don't know why. I
didn't look at you more than at anybody else. It took me all my time to
keep my temper down lest it should burn you all up. I didn't want to be
rude to you people, but I found it wasn't very easy because threats were
the only argument I had. Was I very offensive, Mrs. Travers?"

She had listened tense and very attentive, almost stern. And it was
without the slightest change of expression that she said:

"I think that you bore yourself appropriately to the state of life to
which it has pleased God to call you."

"What state?" muttered Lingard to himself. "I am what I am. They call me
Rajah Laut, King Tom, and such like. I think it amused you to hear it,
but I can tell you it is no joke to have such names fastened on one,
even in fun. And those very names have in them something which makes all
this affair here no small matter to anybody."

She stood before him with a set, severe face.--"Did you call me out
in this alarming manner only to quarrel with me?"--"No, but why do you
choose this time to tell me that my coming for help to you was nothing
but impudence in your sight? Well, I beg your pardon for intruding
on your dignity."--"You misunderstood me," said Mrs. Travers, without
relaxing for a moment her contemplative severity. "Such a flattering
thing had never happened to me before and it will never happen to me
again. But believe me, King Tom, you did me too much honour. Jorgenson
is perfectly right in being angry with you for having taken a woman in
tow."--"He didn't mean to be rude," protested Lingard, earnestly. Mrs.
Travers didn't even smile at this intrusion of a point of manners into
the atmosphere of anguish and suspense that seemed always to arise
between her and this man who, sitting on the sea-chest, had raised his
eyes to her with an air of extreme candour and seemed unable to take
them off again. She continued to look at him sternly by a tremendous
effort of will.

"How changed you are," he murmured.

He was lost in the depths of the simplest wonder. She appeared to him
vengeful and as if turned forever into stone before his bewildered
remorse. Forever. Suddenly Mrs. Travers looked round and sat down in the
chair. Her strength failed her but she remained austere with her hands
resting on the arms of her seat. Lingard sighed deeply and dropped
his eyes. She did not dare relax her muscles for fear of breaking down
altogether and betraying a reckless impulse which lurked at the bottom