“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 ago, only last evening, that I was not capable of thinking myself into a fright; you remember, when you were begging me to try something of the kind. Don't imagine that I would have been ashamed to try. But I couldn't have done it. No. Not even for the sake of somebody else's kingdom. Do you understand me?”
“God knows,” said the attentive Lingard after a time, with an unexpected sigh. “You people seem to be made of another stuff.”