."

"Yes."

"You agree with that? At all events she believes it. So there's one life
spoilt because of her. Suppose now I go to her and say: 'I know that you
pretend out of your charity and kindness to care for me, but in your
heart you are no more than my friend,' why, I hurt her, and cruelly. For
there's all that's left of the second life spoilt too. But bring back
Feversham! Then I can speak--then I can say freely: 'Since you are just
my friend, I would rather be your friend and nothing more. So neither
life will be spoilt at all.'"

"I understand," said Sutch. "It's the way a man should speak. So till
Feversham comes back the pretence remains. She pretends to care for you,
you pretend you do not know she thinks of Harry. While I go eastwards to
bring him home, you go back to her."

"No," said Durrance, "I can't go back. The strain of keeping up the
pretence was telling too much on both of us. I go to Wiesbaden. An
oculist lives there who serves me for an excuse. I shall wait at
Wiesbaden until you bring Harry home."

Sutch opened the door, and the two men went out into the hall. The
servants had long since gone to bed. A couple of candlesticks stood upon
a table beside a lamp. More than once Lieutenant Sutch had forgotten
that his visitor was blind, and he forgot the fact again. He lighted
both candles and held out one to his companion. Durrance knew from the
noise of Sutch's movements what he was doing.

"I have no need of a candle," he said with a smile. The light fell full
upon his face, and Sutch suddenly remarked how tired it looked and old.
There were deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, and
furrows in the cheeks. His hair was grey as an old man's hair. Durrance
had himself made so little of his misfortune this evening that Sutch had
rather come to rate it as a small thing in the sum of human calamities,
but he read his mistake now in Durrance's face. Just above the flame of
the candle, framed in the darkness of the hall, it showed white and
drawn and haggard--the face of an old worn man set upon the stalwart
shoulders of a man in the prime of his years.

"I have said very little to you in the way of sympathy," said Sutch. "I
did not know that you would welcome it. But I am sorry. I am very
sorry."

"Thanks," said Durrance, simply. He stood for a moment or two silently
in front of his host. "When I was in the Soudan, travelling through the
deserts, I used to pass the white skelet