s, ask me," mumbled Jorgenson in his white moustache.

"Speak straight, Jorgenson. What do you think? Are the gentlemen alive?"

"Certainly," said Jorgenson in a sort of disappointed tone as though he
had expected a much more difficult question.

"Is their life in immediate danger?"

"Of course not," said Jorgenson.

Lingard turned away from the oracle. "You have heard him, Mrs. Travers.
You may believe every word he says. There isn't a thought or a purpose
in that Settlement," he continued, pointing at the dumb solitude of the
lagoon, "that this man doesn't know as if they were his own."

"I know. Ask me," muttered Jorgenson, mechanically.

Mrs. Travers said nothing but made a slight movement and her whole rigid
figure swayed dangerously. Lingard put his arm firmly round her waist
and she did not seem aware of it till after she had turned her head and
found Lingard's face very near her own. But his eyes full of concern
looked so close into hers that she was obliged to shut them like a woman
about to faint.

The effect this produced upon Lingard was such that she felt the
tightening of his arm and as she opened her eyes again some of the
colour returned to her face. She met the deepened expression of his
solicitude with a look so steady, with a gaze that in spite of herself
was so profoundly vivid that its clearness seemed to Lingard to throw
all his past life into shade.--"I don't feel faint. It isn't that at
all," she declared in a perfectly calm voice. It seemed to Lingard as
cold as ice.

"Very well," he agreed with a resigned smile. "But you just catch hold
of that rail, please, before I let you go." She, too, forced a smile on
her lips.

"What incredulity," she remarked, and for a time made not the slightest
movement. At last, as if making a concession, she rested the tips of her
fingers on the rail. Lingard gradually removed his arm. "And pray don't
look upon me as a conventional 'weak woman' person, the delicate lady of
your own conception," she said, facing Lingard, with her arm extended to
the rail. "Make that effort please against your own conception of what
a woman like me should be. I am perhaps as strong as you are, Captain
Lingard. I mean it literally. In my body."--"Don't you think I have
seen that long ago?" she heard his deep voice protesting.--"And as to
my courage," Mrs. Travers continued, her expression charmingly undecided
between frowns and smiles; "didn't I tell you only a few hours ag