side, still
hearing her voice though the voice had ceased. Long ago there were
certain bitter words which she had spoken, and he had told Sutch, so
closely had they clung and stung, that he believed in his dying moments
he would hear them again and so go to his grave with her reproaches
ringing in his ears. He remembered that prediction of his now and knew
that it was false. The words he would hear would be those which she had
just uttered.

For Ethne's proposal that they should separate he was not unprepared. He
had heard already that she was engaged, and he did not argue against her
wish. But he understood that she had more to say to him. And she had.
But she was slow to speak it. This was the last time she was to see
Harry Feversham; she meant resolutely to send him away. When once he
had passed through that church door, through which the sunlight and the
summer murmurs came, and his shadow gone from the threshold, she would
never talk with him or set her eyes on him until her life was ended. So
she deferred the moment of his going by silences and slow speech. It
might be so very long before that end came. She had, she thought, the
right to protract this one interview. She rather hoped that he would
speak of his travels, his dangers; she was prepared to discuss at length
with him even the politics of the Soudan. But he waited for her.

"I am going to be married," she said at length, "and immediately. I am
to marry a friend of yours, Colonel Durrance."

There was hardly a pause before Feversham answered:--

"He has cared for you a long while. I was not aware of it until I went
away, but, thinking over everything, I thought it likely, and in a very
little time I became sure."

"He is blind."

"Blind!" exclaimed Feversham. "He, of all men, blind!"

"Exactly," said Ethne. "He--of all men. His blindness explains
everything--why I marry him, why I send you away. It was after he went
blind that I became engaged to him. It was before Captain Willoughby
came to me with the first feather. It was between those two events. You
see, after you went away one thought over things rather carefully. I
used to lie awake and think, and I resolved that two men's lives should
not be spoilt because of me."

"Mine was not," Feversham interrupted. "Please believe that."

"Partly it was," she returned, "I know very well. You would not own it
for my sake, but it was. I was determined that a second should not be.
And so when Colonel D