f necessity and go with a good grace," said
d'Alcacer, ready to take Mr. Travers under the arm persuasively, for he
did not know what to make of that gentleman.

But Mr. Travers seemed another man. "I am afraid, d'Alcacer, that you,
too, are not very strong-minded. I am going to take a blanket off this
bedstead. . . ." He flung it hastily over his arm and followed d'Alcacer
closely. "What I suffer mostly from, strange to say, is cold."

Mrs. Travers and Lingard were waiting near the gangway. To everybody's
extreme surprise Mr. Travers addressed his wife first.

"You were always laughing at people's crazes," was what he said, "and
now you have a craze of your own. But we won't discuss that."

D'Alcacer passed on, raising his cap to Mrs. Travers, and went down the
ship's side into the boat. Jorgenson had vanished in his own manner like
an exorcised ghost, and Lingard, stepping back, left husband and wife
face to face.

"Did you think I was going to make a fuss?" asked Mr. Travers in a very
low voice. "I assure you I would rather go than stay here. You didn't
think that? You have lost all sense of reality, of probability. I was
just thinking this evening that I would rather be anywhere than here
looking on at you. At your folly. . . ."

Mrs. Travers' loud, "Martin!" made Lingard wince, caused d'Alcacer
to lift his head down there in the boat, and even Jorgenson, forward
somewhere out of sight, ceased mumbling in his moustache. The only
person who seemed not to have heard that exclamation was Mr. Travers
himself, who continued smoothly:

". . . at the aberration of your mind, you who seemed so superior to
common credulities. You are not yourself, not at all, and some day you
will admit to me that . . . No, the best thing will be to forget it, as
you will soon see yourself. We shall never mention that subject in the
future. I am certain you will be only too glad to agree with me on that
point."

"How far ahead are you looking?" asked Mrs. Travers, finding her voice
and even the very tone in which she would have addressed him had they
been about to part in the hall of their town house. She might have been
asking him at what time he expected to be home, while a footman held the
door open and the brougham waited in the street.

"Not very far. This can't last much longer." Mr. Travers made a movement
as if to leave her exactly as though he were rather pressed to keep
an appointment. "By the by," he said, checking himse