"--"He didn't mean to be rude," protested Lingard, earnestly. Mrs.
Travers didn't even smile at this intrusion of a point of manners into
the atmosphere of anguish and suspense that seemed always to arise
between her and this man who, sitting on the sea-chest, had raised his
eyes to her with an air of extreme candour and seemed unable to take
them off again. She continued to look at him sternly by a tremendous
effort of will.
"How changed you are," he murmured.
He was lost in the depths of the simplest wonder. She appeared to him
vengeful and as if turned forever into stone before his bewildered
remorse. Forever. Suddenly Mrs. Travers looked round and sat down in the
chair. Her strength failed her but she remained austere with her hands
resting on the arms of her seat. Lingard sighed deeply and dropped
his eyes. She did not dare relax her muscles for fear of breaking down
altogether and betraying a reckless impulse which lurked at the bottom
of her dismay, to seize the head of d'Alcacer's Man of Fate, press it
to her breast once, fling it far away, and vanish herself, vanish out
of life like a wraith. The Man of Fate sat silent and bowed, yet with
a suggestion of strength in his dejection. "If I don't speak," Mrs.
Travers said to herself, with great inward calmness, "I shall burst into
tears.
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