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.