Travers himself or d'Alcacer, though as to the latter it was impossible
to say how much precise, unaccountable, intuitive knowledge was buried
under his unruffled manner.
D'Alcacer was the sort of man whom it would be much easier to suspect
of anything in the world than ignorance--or stupidity. Naturally he
couldn't know anything definite or even guess at the bare outline of the
facts but somehow he must have scented the situation in those few days
of contact with Lingard. He was an acute and sympathetic observer in all
his secret aloofness from the life of men which was so very different
from Jorgenson's secret divorce from the passions of this earth. Mrs.
Travers would have liked to share with d'Alcacer the burden (for it
was a burden) of Lingard's story. After all, she had not provoked those
confidences, neither had that unexpected adventurer from the sea laid on
her an obligation of secrecy. No, not even by implication. He had never
said to her that she was the _only_ person whom he wished to know that
story.
No. What he had said was that she was the only person to whom he _could_
tell the tale himself, as if no one else on earth had the power to draw
it from him. That was the sense and nothing more. Yes, it would have
been a relief to tell d'Alcacer. It would have been a relief to her
feeling of being shut off from the world alone with Lingard as if within
the four walls of a romantic palace and in an exotic atmosphere.
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