self, he was emptied of
all emotion. She never before was so aware of him as a dangerous force.
"He is really ruthless," she thought. They had just left the shadow of
the inner defences about the gate when a slightly hoarse, apologetic
voice was heard behind them repeating insistently, what even Mrs.
Travers' ear detected to be a sort of formula. The words were: "There
is this thing--there is this thing--there is this thing." They turned
round.

"Oh, my scarf," said Mrs. Travers.

A short, squat, broad-faced young fellow having for all costume a pair
of white drawers was offering the scarf thrown over both his arms, as
if they had been sticks, and holding it respectfully as far as possible
from his person. Lingard took it from him and Mrs. Travers claimed it
at once. "Don't forget the proprieties," she said. "This is also my face
veil."

She was arranging it about her head when Lingard said, "There is no
need. I am taking you to those gentlemen."--"I will use it all the
same," said Mrs. Travers. "This thing works both ways, as a matter of
propriety or as a matter of precaution. Till I have an opportunity of
looking into a mirror nothing will persuade me that there isn't some
change in my face." Lingard swung half round and gazed down at her.
Veiled now she confronted him boldly. "Tell me, Captain Lingard, how
many eyes were looking at us a little while ago?"

"Do you care?" he asked.

"Not in the least," she said. "A million stars were looking on, too, and
what did it matter? They were not of the world I know. And it's just the
same with the eyes. They are not of the world I live in."

Lingard thought: "Nobody is." Never before had she seemed to him more
unapproachable, more different and more remote. The glow of a number of
small fires lighted the ground only, and brought out the black bulk
of men lying down in the thin drift of smoke. Only one of these fires,
rather apart and burning in front of the house which was the quarter of
the prisoners, might have been called a blaze and even that was not a
great one. It didn't penetrate the dark space between the piles and the
depth of the verandah above where only a couple of heads and the glint
of a spearhead could be seen dimly in the play of the light. But down
on the ground outside, the black shape of a man seated on a bench had
an intense relief. Another intensely black shadow threw a handful of
brushwood on the fire and went away. The man on the bench got up. It