he must play the zither in a
mean cafe at Wadi Halfa. But it seemed to her that he had spoken to her
as she to him. The music had, after all, been a bridge. It was not even
strange that he had used Durrance's voice wherewith to speak to her.

"When was this?" she asked at length.

"In February of this year. I will tell you about it."

"Yes, please, tell me."

And Durrance spoke out of the shadows of the room.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ANSWER TO THE OVERTURE

Ethne did not turn towards Durrance or move at all from her attitude.
She sat with her violin upon her knees, looking across the moonlit
garden to the band of silver in the gap of the trees; and she kept her
position deliberately. For it helped her to believe that Harry Feversham
himself was speaking to her, she was able to forget that he was speaking
through the voice of Durrance. She almost forgot that Durrance was even
in the room. She listened with Durrance's own intentness, and anxious
that the voice should speak very slowly, so that the message might take
a long time in the telling, and she gather it all jealously to her
heart.

"It was on the night before I started eastward into the desert--for the
last time," said Durrance, and the deep longing and regret with which he
dwelt upon that "last time" for once left Ethne quite untouched.

"Yes," she said. "That was in February. The middle of the month, wasn't
it? Do you remember the day? I should like to know the exact day if you
can tell me."

"The fifteenth," said Durrance; and Ethne repeated the date
meditatively.

"I was at Glenalla all February," she said. "What was I doing on the
fifteenth? It does not matter."

She had felt a queer sort of surprise all the time while Willoughby was
telling his story that morning, that she had not known, by some
instinct, of these incidents at the actual moment of their occurrence.
The surprise returned to her now. It was strange that she should have
had to wait for this August night and this summer garden of moonlight
and closed flowers before she learned of the meeting between Feversham
and Durrance on February 15 and heard the message. And remorse came to
her because of that delay. "It was my own fault," she said to herself.
"If I had kept my faith in him I should have known at once. I am well
punished." It did not at all occur to her that the message could convey
any but the best of news. It would carry on the good tidings which she
had already heard.