“While of course he likes this very much,” she observed. Lingard gave an abrupt laugh.
“I don't think it's in my power to do anything that he would like,” he said in a serious tone. “Forgive me my frankness, Mrs. Travers, but he makes it very difficult sometimes for me to keep civil. Whatever I have had to put up with in life I have never had to put up with contempt.”
“I quite believe that,” said Mrs. Travers. “Don't your friends call you King Tom?”
“Nobody that I care for. I have no friends. Oh, yes, they call me that . . .”
“You have no friends?”
“Not I,” he said with decision. “A man like me has no chums.”
“It's quite possible,” murmured Mrs. Travers to herself.
“No, not even Jorgenson. Old crazy Jorgenson. He calls me King Tom, too. You see what that's worth.”
“Yes, I see. Or rather I have heard. That poor man has no tone, and so much depends on that. Now suppose I were to call you King Tom now and then between ourselves,” Mrs. Travers' voice proposed, distantly tentative in the night that invested her person with a colourless vagueness of form.
She waited in the stillness, her elbows on the rail and her face in her hands as if she had already forgotten what she had said. She heard at her elbow the deep murmur of: