ually
recognised and felt it. Then she had gone back into the church and taken
a seat, and gathered up her strength.

It would be easier for both of them, she thought, if she should give no
sign of what so quick a separation cost her. He would know surely
enough, and she wished him to know; she wished him to understand that
not one moment of his six years, so far as she was concerned, had been
spent in vain. But that could be understood without the signs of
emotion. So she spoke her speech looking steadily straight forward and
speaking in an even voice.

"I know that you will mind very much, just as I do. But there is no help
for it," she resumed. "At all events you are at home again, with the
right to be at home. It is a great comfort to me to know that. But there
are other, much greater reasons from which we can both take comfort.
Colonel Trench told me enough of your captivity to convince me that we
both see with the same eyes. We both understand that this second
parting, hard as it is, is still a very slight, small thing compared
with the other, our first parting over at the house six years ago. I
felt very lonely after that, as I shall not feel lonely now. There was a
great barrier between us then separating us forever. We should never
have met again here or afterwards. I am quite sure of that. But you have
broken the barrier down by all your pain and bravery during these last
years. I am no less sure of that. I am absolutely confident about it,
and I believe you are too. So that although we shall not see one another
here and as long as we live, the afterwards is quite sure for us both.
And we can wait for that. You can. You have waited with so much strength
all these years since we parted. And I can too, for I get strength from
your victory."

She stopped, and for a while there was silence in that church. To
Feversham her words were gracious as rain upon dry land. To hear her
speak them uplifted him so that those six years of trial, of slinking
into corners out of the sight of his fellows, of lonely endurance, of
many heart-sinkings and much bodily pain, dwindled away into
insignificance. They had indeed borne their fruit to him. For Ethne had
spoken in a gentle voice just what his ears had so often longed to hear
as he lay awake at night in the bazaar at Suakin, in the Nile villages,
in the dim wide spaces of the desert, and what he had hardly dared to
hope she ever would speak. He stood quite silently by her