was pleading.

"You saw your oculist yesterday?" she asked quickly, as soon as they
met. "Well, what did he say?"

Durrance shrugged his shoulders.

"That one must wait. Only time can show whether a cure is possible or
not," he answered, and Ethne bent forward a little and scrutinised his
face as though she doubted that he spoke the truth.

"But must you and I wait?" she asked.

"Surely," he returned. "It would be wiser on all counts." And thereupon
he asked her suddenly a question of which she did not see the drift. "It
was Mrs. Adair, I imagine, who proposed this plan that I should come
home to Guessens and that you should stay with her here across the
fields?"

Ethne was puzzled by the question, but she answered it directly and
truthfully. "I was in great distress when I heard of your accident. I
was so distressed that at the first I could not think what to do. I came
to London and told Laura, since she is my friend, and this was her plan.
Of course I welcomed it with all my heart;" and the note of pleading
rang in her voice. She was asking Durrance to confirm her words, and he
understood that. He turned towards her with a smile.

"I know that very well, Ethne," he said gently.

Ethne drew a breath of relief, and the anxiety passed for a little while
from her face.

"It was kind of Mrs. Adair," he resumed, "but it is rather hard on you,
who would like to be back in your own country. I remember very well a
sentence which Harry Feversham--" He spoke the name quite carelessly,
but paused just for a moment after he had spoken it. No expression upon
his face showed that he had any intention in so pausing, but Ethne
suspected one. He was listening, she suspected, for some movement of
uneasiness, perhaps of pain, into which she might possibly be betrayed.
But she made no movement. "A sentence which Harry Feversham spoke a long
while since," he continued, "in London just before I left London for
Egypt. He was speaking of you, and he said: 'She is of her country and
more of her county. I do not think she could be happy in any place which
was not within reach of Donegal.' And when I remember that, it seems
rather selfish that I should claim to keep you here at so much cost to
you."

"I was not thinking of that," Ethne exclaimed, "when I asked why we must
wait. That makes me out most selfish. I was merely wondering why you
preferred to wait, why you insist upon it. For, of course, although one
hopes and prays with