go forgotten--and she could not but see that
in spite of her prayer she lived perpetually in his thoughts. There was
a strain of hopefulness too, as though he moved in a world painted with
new colours and suddenly grown musical. Ethne had never freed herself
from the haunting fear that one man's life had been spoilt because of
her; she had never faltered from her determination that this should not
happen with a second. Only with Durrance's letters before her she could
not evade a new and perplexing question. By what means was that
possibility to be avoided? There were two ways. By choosing which of
them could she fulfil her determination? She was no longer so sure as
she had been the year before that his career was all in all. The
question recurred to her again and again. She took it out with her on
the hillside with the letters, and pondered and puzzled over it and got
never an inch nearer to a solution. Even her violin failed her in this
strait.

CHAPTER XII

DURRANCE SHARPENS HIS WITS

It was a night of May, and outside the mess-room at Wadi Halfa three
officers were smoking on a grass knoll above the Nile. The moon was at
its full, and the strong light had robbed even the planets of their
lustre. The smaller stars were not visible at all, and the sky washed of
its dark colour, curved overhead, pearly-hued and luminous. The three
officers sat in their lounge chairs and smoked silently, while the
bull-frogs croaked from an island in mid-river. At the bottom of the
small steep cliff on which they sat the Nile, so sluggish was its flow,
shone like a burnished mirror, and from the opposite bank the desert
stretched away to infinite distances, a vast plain with scattered
hummocks, a plain white as a hoar frost on the surface of which the
stones sparkled like jewels. Behind the three officers of the garrison
the roof of the mess-room verandah threw a shadow on the ground; it
seemed a solid piece of blackness.

One of the three officers struck a match and held it to the end of his
cigar. The flame lit up a troubled and anxious face.

"I hope that no harm has come to him," he said, as he threw the match
away. "I wish that I could say I believed it."

The speaker was a man of middle age and the colonel of a Soudanese
battalion. He was answered by a man whose hair had gone grey, it is
true. But grey hair is frequent in the Soudan, and his unlined face
still showed that he was young. He was Lieutenant Calder of t