ht to such a wish. When you gave me that fourth feather in the little
room at Ramelton, with the music coming faintly through the door, I
understood your meaning. There was to be a complete, an irrevocable end.
We were not to be the merest acquaintances. So I said nothing to you of
the plan which came clear and definite into my mind at the very time
when you gave me the feathers. You see, I might never have succeeded. I
might have died trying to succeed. I might even perhaps have shirked the
attempt. It would be time enough for me to speak if I came back. So I
never formed any wish that you should wait."

"That was what Colonel Trench told me."

"I told him that too?"

"On your first night in the House of Stone."

"Well, it's just the truth. The most I hoped for--and I did hope for
that every hour of every day--was that, if I did come home, you would
take back your feather, and that we might--not renew our friendship
here, but see something of one another afterwards."

"Yes," said Ethne. "Then there will be no parting."

Ethne spoke very simply, without even a sigh, but she looked at Harry
Feversham as she spoke and smiled. The look and the smile told him what
the cost of the separation would be to her. And, understanding what it
meant now, he understood, with an infinitely greater completeness than
he had ever reached in his lonely communings, what it must have meant
six years ago when she was left with her pride stricken as sorely as her
heart.

"What trouble you must have gone through!" he cried, and she turned and
looked him over.

"Not I alone," she said gently. "I passed no nights in the House of
Stone."

"But it was my fault. Do you remember what you said when the morning
came through the blinds? 'It's not right that one should suffer so much
pain.' It was not right."

"I had forgotten the words--oh, a long time since--until Colonel Trench
reminded me. I should never have spoken them. When I did I was not
thinking they would live so in your thoughts. I am sorry that I spoke
them."

"Oh, they were just enough. I never blamed you for them," said
Feversham, with a laugh. "I used to think that they would be the last
words I should hear when I turned my face to the wall. But you have
given me others to-day wherewith to replace them."

"Thank you," she said quietly.

There was nothing more to be said, and Feversham wondered why Ethne did
not rise from her seat in the pew. It did not occur to him to tal