uld . . . suppress it."

D'Alcacer was looking up from the seat, full of wonder. Mrs. Travers
appealed to him in a calm voice through the folds of the scarf:

"Tell me, Mr. d'Alcacer, you who can look on it calmly, wouldn't I be
right?"

"Why, has Jorgenson told you anything?"

"Directly--nothing, except a phrase or two which really I could not
understand. They seemed to have a hidden sense and he appeared to attach
some mysterious importance to them that he dared not explain to me."

"That was a risk on his part," exclaimed d'Alcacer. "And he trusted you.
Why you, I wonder!"

"Who can tell what notions he has in his head? Mr. d'Alcacer, I believe
his only object is to call Captain Lingard away from us. I understood it
only a few minutes ago. It has dawned upon me. All he wants is to call
him off."

"Call him off," repeated d'Alcacer, a little bewildered by the aroused
fire of her conviction. "I am sure I don't want him called off any more
than you do; and, frankly, I don't believe Jorgenson has any such power.
But upon the whole, and if you feel that Jorgenson has the power, I
would--yes, if I were in your place I think I would suppress anything I
could not understand."

Mrs. Travers listened to the very end. Her eyes--they appeared
incredibly sombre to d'Alcacer--seemed to watch the fall of every
deliberate word and after he had ceased they remained still for an
appreciable time. Then she turned away with a gesture that seemed to
say: "So be it."

D'Alcacer raised his voice suddenly after her. "Stay! Don't forget that
not only your husband's but my head, too, is being played at that game.
My judgment is not . . ."

She stopped for a moment and freed her lips. In the profound stillness
of the courtyard her clear voice made the shadows at the nearest fires
stir a little with low murmurs of surprise.

"Oh, yes, I remember whose heads I have to save," she cried. "But in all
the world who is there to save that man from himself?"

V

D'Alcacer sat down on the bench again. "I wonder what she knows," he
thought, "and I wonder what I have done." He wondered also how far he
had been sincere and how far affected by a very natural aversion from
being murdered obscurely by ferocious Moors with all the circumstances
of barbarity. It was a very naked death to come upon one suddenly. It
was robbed of all helpful illusions, such as the free will of a suicide,
the heroism of a warrior, or the exaltation of a martyr