--"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.
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