her hands to her
breast and felt the shape of the ring, thick, heavy, set with a big
stone. It was there, secret, hung against her heart, and enigmatic. What
did it mean? What could it mean? What was the feeling it could arouse or
the action it could provoke? And she thought with compunction that she
ought to have given it to Lingard at once, without thinking, without
hesitating. "There! This is what I came for. To give you this." Yes, but
there had come an interval when she had been able to think of nothing,
and since then she had had the time to reflect--unfortunately. To
remember Jorgenson's hostile, contemptuous glance enveloping her from
head to foot at the break of a day after a night of lonely anguish. And
now while she sat there veiled from his keen sight there was that other
man, that d'Alcacer, prophesying. O yes, triumphant. She knew already
what that was. Mrs. Travers became afraid of the ring. She felt ready to
pluck it from her neck and cast it away.

"I mistrust him," she said.--"You do!" exclaimed d'Alcacer,
very low.--"I mean that Jorgenson. He seems a merciless sort of
creature."--"He is indifferent to everything," said d'Alcacer.--"It may
be a mask."--"Have you some evidence, Mrs. Travers?"

"No," said Mrs. Travers without hesitation. "I have my instinct."

D'Alcacer remained silent for a while as though he were pursuing another
train of thought altogether, then in a gentle, almost playful tone: "If
I were a woman," he said, turning to Mrs. Travers, "I would always trust
my intuition."--"If you were a woman, Mr. d'Alcacer, I would not be
speaking to you in this way because then I would be suspect to you."

The thought that before long perhaps he would be neither man nor woman
but a lump of cold clay, crossed d'Alcacer's mind, which was living,
alert, and unsubdued by the danger. He had welcomed the arrival of Mrs.
Travers simply because he had been very lonely in that stockade, Mr.
Travers having fallen into a phase of sulks complicated with shivering
fits. Of Lingard d'Alcacer had seen almost nothing since they had
landed, for the Man of Fate was extremely busy negotiating in the
recesses of Belarab's main hut; and the thought that his life was being
a matter of arduous bargaining was not agreeable to Mr. d'Alcacer. The
Chief's dependents and the armed men garrisoning the stockade paid very
little attention to him apparently, and this gave him the feeling of his
captivity being very perfect and ho