D'Alcacer did not seek his camp bedstead. He didn't
even sit down. With the palms of his hands against the edge of the table
he leaned back against it. In that negligent attitude he preserved an
alert mind which for a moment wondered whether Mrs. Travers had
not spoiled Lingard a little. Yet in the suddenness of the forced
association, where, too, d'Alcacer was sure there was some moral problem
in the background, he recognized the extreme difficulty of weighing
accurately the imperious demands against the necessary reservations, the
exact proportions of boldness and caution. And d'Alcacer admired upon
the whole Mrs. Travers' cleverness.
There could be no doubt that she had the situation in her hands. That,
of course, did not mean safety. She had it in her hands as one may hold
some highly explosive and uncertain compound. D'Alcacer thought of her
with profound sympathy and with a quite unselfish interest. Sometimes
in a street we cross the path of personalities compelling sympathy and
wonder but for all that we don't follow them home. D'Alcacer refrained
from following Mrs. Travers any further. He had become suddenly aware
that Mr. Travers was sitting up on his camp bedstead. He must have done
it very suddenly. Only a moment before he had appeared plunged in
the deepest slumber, and the stillness for a long time now had been
perfectly unbroken.
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