its hopeful forerunners--that he
had not forgotten. As she waited at the window she understood very
clearly that it was she herself who must buckle to the hard work of
forgetting. Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always that
by no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had not
forgotten.

"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and she
turned towards Mrs. Adair.

"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs. Adair, "that the two lives will
not be more surely spoilt by this way of yours--the way of marriage?
Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite of
your will, something of a hindrance and a drag? Isn't it possible that
he may come to feel that too? I wonder. I very much wonder."

"No," said Ethne, decisively. "I shall not feel it, and he must not."

The two lives, according to Mrs. Adair, were not the lives of Durrance
and Harry Feversham, but of Durrance and Ethne herself. There she was
wrong; but Ethne did not dispute the point, she was indeed rather glad
that her friend was wrong, and she allowed her to continue in her wrong
belief.

Ethne resumed her watch at the window, foreseeing her life, planning it
out so that never might she be caught off her guard. The task would be
difficult, no doubt, and it was no wonder that in these minutes while
she waited fear grew upon her lest she should fail. But the end was well
worth the effort, and she set her eyes upon that. Durrance had lost
everything which made life to him worth living the moment he went
blind--everything, except one thing. "What should I do if I were
crippled?" he had said to Harry Feversham on the morning when for the
last time they had ridden together in the Row. "A clever man might put
up with it. But what should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my
days?" Ethne had not heard the words, but she understood the man well
enough without them. He was by birth the inheritor of the other places,
and he had lost his heritage. The things which delighted him, the long
journeys, the faces of strange countries, the camp-fire, a mere spark of
red light amidst black and empty silence, the hours of sleep in the open
under bright stars, the cool night wind of the desert, and the work of
government--all these things he had lost. Only one thing remained to
him--herself, and only, as she knew very well, herself so long as he
could believe she wanted him. And while she was still occupied wi