.

Durrance did not immediately answer. The roar of the torrent throbbed
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 distress
as a cry of pain with another woman. He turned about towards her. Her
head was bent, but she raised it as he turned, and though her lips
smiled, there was a look of great trouble in her eyes. Durrance was a
man like another. His first thought was whether there was not some
obstacle which would hinder her from compliance, even though she
herself were willing.

"There is your father," he said.

"Yes," she answered, "there is my father too. I could not leave him."

"Nor need you," said he, quickly. "That difficulty can be surmounted. To
tell the truth I was not thinking of your father at the moment."

"Nor was I," said she.

Durrance turned away and sat for a little while staring down the rocks
into a wrinkled pool of water just beneath. It was after all the shadow
of Feversham which stretched between himself and her.

"I know, of course," he said, "that you would never feel trouble, as so
many do, with half your heart. You would neither easily care nor lightly
forget."

"I remember enough," she returned in a low voice, "to make your words
rather a pain to me. Some day perhaps I may bring myself to tell
everything which happened at that ball three years ago, and then you
will be better able to understand why I am a little distressed. All that
I can tell you now is this: I have a great fear that I was to some
degree the cause of another man's ruin. I do not mean that I was to
blame for it. But if I had not been known to him, his career might
perhaps never have come to so abrupt an end. I am not sure, but I am
afraid. I asked whether it was so,