aiting him at his club. It told him simply that she was staying
with Mrs. Adair, and would be glad if he would find the time to call;
but there was a black border to the paper and the envelope. Durrance
called at Hill Street the next afternoon and found Ethne alone.

"I did not write to Wadi Halfa," she explained at once, "for I thought
that you would be on your way home before my letter could arrive. My
father died last month, towards the end of May."

"I was afraid when I got your letter that you would have this to tell
me," he replied. "I am very sorry. You will miss him."

"More than I can say," said she, with a quiet depth of feeling. "He died
one morning early--I think I will tell you if you would care to hear,"
and she related to him the manner of Dermod's death, of which a chill
was the occasion rather than the cause; for he died of a gradual
dissolution rather than a definite disease.

It was a curious story which Ethne had to tell, for it seemed that just
before his death Dermod recaptured something of his old masterful
spirit. "We knew that he was dying," Ethne said. "He knew it too, and
at seven o'clock of the afternoon after--" she hesitated for a moment
and resumed, "after he had spoken for a little while to me, he called
his dog by name. The dog sprang at once on to the bed, though his voice
had not risen above a whisper, and crouching quite close, pushed its
muzzle with a whine under my father's hand. Then he told me to leave him
and the dog altogether alone. I was to shut the door upon him. The dog
would tell me when to open it again. I obeyed him and waited outside the
door until one o'clock. Then a loud sudden howl moaned through the
house." She stopped for a while. This pause was the only sign of
distress which she gave, and in a few moments she went on, speaking
quite simply, without any of the affectations of grief. "It was trying
to wait outside that door while the afternoon faded and the night came.
It was night, of course, long before the end. He would have no lamp left
in his room. One imagined him just the other side of that thin
door-panel, lying very still and silent in the great four-poster bed
with his face towards the hills, and the light falling. One imagined the
room slipping away into darkness, and the windows continually looming
into a greater importance, and the dog by his side and no one else,
right to the very end. He would have it that way, but it was rather hard
for me."

Du