He tied up his horse and entered in at the gate. A formless barrack without, the house within was a place of comfort. The room into which he was shown, with its brasses9 and its gleaming oak and its wide prospect10, was bright as the afternoon itself. Durrance imagined it, too, with the blinds drawn11 upon a winter's night, and the fire red on the hearth12, and the wind skirling about the hills and rapping on the panes13.
Ethne greeted him without the least mark of surprise.
"I thought that you would come," she said, and a smile shone upon her face.
Durrance laughed suddenly as they shook hands, and Ethne wondered why. She followed the direction of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon a table at her side. It was pale in colour; there was a mark, too, close to the bridge, where a morsel14 of worm-eaten wood had been replaced.
"It is yours," she said. "You were in Egypt. I could not well send it back to you there."
"I have hoped lately, since I knew," returned Durrance, "that, nevertheless, you would accept it."
"You see I have," said Ethne, and looking straight into his eyes she added: "I accepted it some while ago. There was a time when I needed to be assured that I had sure friends. And a thing tangible15 helped. I was very glad to have it."
Durrance took the instrument from the table, handling it delicately, like a sacred vessel16.
"You have played upon it? The Musoline overture17, perhaps," said he.
"Do you remember that?" she returned, with a laugh. "Yes, I have played upon it, but only recently. For a long time I put my violin away. It talked to me too intimately of many things which I wished to forget," and these words, like the rest, she spoke18 without hesitation19 or any down-dropping of the eyes.
Durrance fetched up his luggage from Rathmullen the next day, and stayed at the farm for a week. But up to the last hour of his visit no further reference was made to Harry20 Feversham by either Ethne or Durrance, although they were thrown much into each other's company. For Dermod was even more broken than Mrs. Adair's description had led Durrance to expect. His speech was all dwindled21 to monosyllables; his frame was shrunken, and his clothes bagged upon his limbs; his very stature22 seemed lessened23; even the anger was clouded from his eye; he had become a stay-at-home, dozing24 for the most part of the day by a fire, even in that July weather; his longest walk was to the little grey church which stood naked upon a mound25 some quarter of a mile away and within view of the windows, and even that walk taxed his strength. He was an old man fallen upon decrepitude26, and almost out of recognition, so that his gestures and the rare tones of his voice struck upon Durrance as something painful, like the mimicry27 of a dead man. His collie dog seemed to age in company, and, to see them side by side, one might have said, in sympathy.
Durrance and Ethne were thus thrown much together. By day, in the wet weather or the fine, they tramped the hills, while she, with the colour glowing in her face, and her eyes most jealous and eager, showed him her country and exacted his admiration28. In the evenings she would take her violin, and sitting as of old with an averted29 face, she would bid the strings30 speak of the heights and depths. Durrance sat watching the sweep of her arm, the absorption of her face, and counting up his chances. He had not brought with him to Glenalla Lieutenant31 Sutch's anticipations32 that he would succeed. The shadow of Harry Feversham might well separate them. For another thing, he knew very well that poverty would fall more lightly upon her than upon most women. He had indeed had proofs of that. Though the Lennon House was altogether ruined, and its lands gone from her, Ethne was still amongst her own people. They still looked eagerly for her visits; she was still the princess of that country-side. On the other hand, she took a frank pleasure in his company, and she led him to speak of his three years' service in the East. No detail was too insignificant33 for her inquiries34, and while he spoke her eyes continually sounded him, and the smile upon her lips continually approved. Durrance did not understand what she was after. Possibly no one could have understood unless he was aware of what had passed between Harry Feversham and Ethne. Durrance wore the likeness35 of a man, and she was anxious to make sure that the spirit of a man informed it. He was a dark lantern to her. There might be a flame burning within, or there might be mere36 vacancy37 and darkness. She was pushing back the slide so that she might be sure.
She led him to speak of Egypt upon the last day of his visit. They were seated upon the hillside, on the edge of a stream which leaped from ledge38 to ledge down a miniature gorge39 of rock, and flowed over deep pools between the ledges40 very swiftly, a torrent41 of clear black water.
"I travelled once for four days amongst the mirages," he said,—"lagoons, still as a mirror and fringed with misty43 trees. You could almost walk your camel up to the knees in them, before the lagoon42 receded44 and the sand glared at you. And one cannot imagine that glare. Every stone within view dances and shakes like a heliograph; you can see—yes, actually see—the heat flow breast high across the desert swift as this stream here, only pellucid45. So till the sun sets ahead of you level with your eyes! Imagine the nights which follow—nights of infinite silence, with a cool friendly wind blowing from horizon to horizon—and your bed spread for you under the great dome46 of stars. Oh," he cried, drawing a deep breath, "but that country grows on you. It's like the Southern Cross—four overrated stars when first you see them, but in a week you begin to look for them, and you miss them when you travel north again." He raised himself upon his elbow and turned suddenly towards her. "Do you know—I can only speak for myself—but I never feel alone in those empty spaces. On the contrary, I always feel very close to the things I care about, and to the few people I care about too."
Her eyes shone very brightly upon him, her lips parted in a smile. He moved nearer to her upon the grass, and sat with his feet gathered under him upon one side, and leaning upon his arm.
"I used to imagine you out there," he said. "You would have loved it—from the start before daybreak, in the dark, to the camp-fire at night. You would have been at home. I used to think so as I lay awake wondering how the world went with my friends."
"And you go back there?" she said.
Durrance did not immediately answer. The roar of the torrent throbbed47 about them. When he did speak, all the enthusiasm had gone from his voice. He spoke gazing into the stream.
"To Wadi Halfa. For two years. I suppose so."
Ethne kneeled upon the grass at his side.
"I shall miss you," she said.
She was kneeling just behind him as he sat on the ground, and again there fell a silence between them.
"Of what are you thinking?"
"That you need not miss me," he said, and he was aware that she drew back and sank down upon her heels. "My appointment at Halfa—I might shorten its term. I might perhaps avoid it altogether. I have still half my furlough."
She did not answer nor did she change her attitude. She remained very still, and Durrance was alarmed, and all his hopes sank. For a stillness of attitude he knew to be with her as definite an expression of
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