oral problem
in the background, he recognized the extreme difficulty of weighing
accurately the imperious demands against the necessary reservations, the
exact proportions of boldness and caution. And d'Alcacer admired upon
the whole Mrs. Travers' cleverness.

There could be no doubt that she had the situation in her hands. That,
of course, did not mean safety. She had it in her hands as one may hold
some highly explosive and uncertain compound. D'Alcacer thought of her
with profound sympathy and with a quite unselfish interest. Sometimes
in a street we cross the path of personalities compelling sympathy and
wonder but for all that we don't follow them home. D'Alcacer refrained
from following Mrs. Travers any further. He had become suddenly aware
that Mr. Travers was sitting up on his camp bedstead. He must have done
it very suddenly. Only a moment before he had appeared plunged in
the deepest slumber, and the stillness for a long time now had been
perfectly unbroken. D'Alcacer was startled enough for an exclamation
and Mr. Travers turned his head slowly in his direction. D'Alcacer
approached the bedstead with a certain reluctance.

"Awake?" he said.

"A sudden chill," said Mr. Travers. "But I don't feel cold now. Strange!
I had the impression of an icy blast."

"Ah!" said d'Alcacer.

"Impossible, of course!" went on Mr. Travers. "This stagnating air never
moves. It clings odiously to one. What time is it?"

"Really, I don't know."

"The glass of my watch was smashed on that night when we were so
treacherously assailed by the savages on the sandbank," grumbled Mr.
Travers.

"I must say I was never so surprised in my life," confessed d'Alcacer.
"We had stopped and I was lighting a cigar, you may remember."

"No," said Mr. Travers. "I had just then pulled out my watch. Of course
it flew out of my hand but it hung by the chain. Somebody trampled on
it. The hands are broken off short. It keeps on ticking but I can't tell
the time. It's absurd. Most provoking."

"Do you mean to say," asked d'Alcacer, "that you have been winding it up
every evening?"

Mr. Travers looked up from his bedstead and he also seemed surprised.
"Why! I suppose I have." He kept silent for a while. "It isn't so
much blind habit as you may think. My habits are the outcome of strict
method. I had to order my life methodically. You know very well, my dear
d'Alcacer, that without strict method I would not have been able to get
through my wor