with time your friendship might grow into more than friendship. So long as there was a chance of that, I-Ethne, I could not let you go. So, I listened for some new softness in your voice, some new buoyancy in your laughter, some new deep thrill of the heart in the music which you played, longing for it-how much! Well, to-night I have burnt my boats. I have admitted to you that I knew friendship limited your thoughts of me. I have owned to you that there is no hope my sight will be restored. I have even dared to-night to tell you what I have kept secret for so long, my meeting with Harry Feversham and the peril he has run. And why? Because for the first time I have heard to-night just those signs for which I waited. The new softness, the new pride, in your voice, the buoyancy in your laughter- they have been audible to me all this evening. The restraint and the tension were gone from your manner. And when you played, it was as though some one with just your skill and knowledge played, but some one who let her heart speak resonantly through the music as until to-night you have never done. Ethne, Ethne!'
But at that moment Ethne was in the little enclosed garden whither she had led Captain Willoughby that morning. Here she was private; her collie dog had joined her; she had reached the solitude and the silence which had become necessities to her. A few more words from Durrance and her prudence would have broken beneath the strain. All that pretence of affection which during these last months she had so sedulously built up about him like a wall which he was never to look over, would have been struck down and levelled to the ground. Durrance, indeed, had already looked over the wall, was looking over it with amazed eyes at this instant, but that Ethne did not know, and to hinder him from knowing it she had fled. The moonlight slept in silver upon the creek; the tall trees stood dreaming to the stars; the lapping of the tide against the bank was no louder than the music of a river. She sat down upon the bench and strove to gather some of the quietude of that summer night into her heart, and to learn from the growing things of nature about her something of their patience and their extraordinary perseverance.
But the occurrences of the day had overtaxed her, and she could not. Only this morning, and in this very garden, the good news had come and she had regained Harry Feversham. For in that way she thought of Willoughby's message. This morning she had regained him, and this evening the bad news had come and she had lost him, and most likely right to the very end of mortal life. Harry Feversham meant to pay for his fault to the uttermost scruple, and Ethne cried out against his thoroughness, which he had learned from no other than herself. 'Surely,' she thought, 'he might have been content. In redeeming his honour in the eyes of one of the three he has done enough, he has redeemed it in the eyes of all.'
But he had gone south to join Colonel Trench in Omdurman. Of that squalid and shadowless town, of its hideous barbarities, of the horrors of its prison-house, Ethne knew nothing at all. But Captain Willoughby had hinted enough to fill her imagination with terrors. He had offered to explain to her what captivity in Omdurman implied, and she wrung her hands, as she remembered that she had refused to listen. What cruelties might not be practised? Even now, at that very hour perhaps, on this night of summer-but she dared not let her thoughts wander that way…
The lapping of the tide against the banks was like the music of a river. It brought to Ethne's mind one particular river which had sung and babbled in her ears when five years ago she had watched out another summer night till dawn. Never had she so hungered for her own country and the companionship of its brown hills and streams. No, not even this afternoon, when she had sat at her window and watched the lights change upon the creek. Donegal had a sanctity for her, it seemed when she dwelled in it to set her in a way apart from and above earthly taints; and as her heart went out in a great longing towards it now, a sudden fierce loathing for the concealments, the shifts and maneuvers which she had practised, and still must practise, sprang up within her. A great weariness came upon her, too. But she did not change from her fixed resolve. Two lives were not to be spoilt because she lived in the world. To-morrow she could gather up her strength and begin again. For Durrance must never know that there was another whom she placed before him in her thoughts. Meanwhile, however, Durrance within the drawing-room brought his confession to an end.
'So you see,' he said, 'I could not speak of Harry Feversham until to-night. For I was afraid that what I had to tell you would hurt you very much. I was afraid that you still remembered him, in spite of those five years. I knew, of course, that you were my friend. But I doubted whether in your heart you were not more than that to him. To-night, however, I could tell you without fear.'
Now at all events he expected an answer. Mrs. Adair, still standing by the window, heard him move in the shadows.
'Ethne!' he said, with some surprise in his voice; and since again no answer came, he rose, and walked towards the chair in which Ethne had sat. Mrs. Adair could see him now. His hands felt for and grasped the back of the chair. He bent over it, as though he thought Ethne was leaning forward with her hands upon her knees.
'Ethne,' he said again, and there was in this iteration of her name more trouble and doubt than surprise. It seemed to Mrs. Adair that he dreaded to find her silently weeping. He was beginning to speculate whether after all he had been right in his inference from Ethne's recapture of her youth to-night, whether the shadow of Feversham did not after all fall between them. He leaned farther forward, feeling with his hand, and suddenly a string of Ethne's violin twanged loud. She had left it lying on the chair, and his fingers had touched it.
Durrance drew himself up straight and stood quite motionless and silent, like a man who had suffered a shock and is bewildered. He passed his hand across his forehead once or twice, and then, without calling upon Ethne again, he advanced to the open window.
Mrs. Adair did not move, and she held her breath. There was just the width of the sill between them. The moonlight struck full upon Durrance, and she saw a comprehension gradually dawn in his face that some one was standing close to him.
'Ethne,' he said a third time, and now he appealed.
He stretched out a hand timidly and touched her dress.
'It is not Ethne,' he said with a start.
'No, it is not Ethne,' Mrs. Adair answered quickly. Durrance drew back a step from the window, and for a little while was silent.
'Where has she gone?' he asked at length.
'Into the garden. She ran across the terrace and down the steps very quickly and silently. I saw her from my chair. Then I heard you speaking alone.'
'Can you see her now in the garden?'
'No; she went across the lawn towards the trees and their great shadows. There is only the moonlight in the garden now.'
Durrance stepped across the window sill and stood by the side of Mrs. Adair. The last slip which Ethne had made betrayed her inevitably to the man who had grown quick. There could be only one reason for her sudden unexplained and secret flight. He had told her that Feversham had wandered south from Wadi Halfa into the savage country; he had spoken out his fears as to Feversham's fate without reserve, thinking that she had forgotten him, and indeed rather inclined to blame her for the callous indifference with which she received the news. The callousness was a mere mask, and she had fled because she no longer had the strength to hold it up before her face. His first suspicions had been right. Feversham still stood between Ethne and himself and held them at arm's length.
'She ran as though she was in great trouble and hardly knew what she was doing,' Mrs. Adair continued. 'Did you cause that trouble?'
'Yes.'
'I thought so, from what I heard you say.'
Mrs. Adair wanted to hurt, and in spite of Durrance's impenetrable face, she felt that she had succeeded. It was a small sort of compensation for the weeks of mortification which she had endured. There is something which might be said for Mrs. Adair; extenuations might be pleaded, even if no defence was made. For she like Ethne was overtaxed that night. That calm pale face of hers hid the quick passions of the South, and she had been racked by them to the limits of endurance. There had been something grotesque, something rather horrible, in that outbreak and confession by Durrance, after Ethne had fled from the room. He was speaking out his heart to an empty chair. She herself had stood without the window with a bitter longing that he had spoken so to her and a bitter knowledge that he never would. She was sunk deep in humiliation. The irony of the position tortured her; it was like a jest of grim selfish gods played off upon ineffectual mortals to their hurt. And at the bottom of all the thoughts rankled that memory of the extinguished lamp, and the low, hushed voices speaking one to the other in darkness. Therefore she spoke to give pain and was glad that she gave it, even though it was to the man whom she coveted.
'There's one thing which I don't understand,' said Durrance. 'I mean the change which we both noticed in
