volved in a waltz. It may sound comic to hear about, but
if you could have seen! ... It fairly plucked at one's heart. I do not
think that I have ever in my life witnessed anything quite so sad. The
little crowd outside, negroes, mind you, laughing at the troupe, passing
from one to the other any sort of low jest at their expense, and inside
the four white people--the old woman, clumsy, heavy-footed, shining with
heat, lumbering round slowly, panting with her exertions; the girl,
lissom and young; the two men with their discordant, torturing music;
and just above you the great planets and stars of an African sky, and
just about you the great silent and spacious dignity of the moonlit
desert. Imagine it! The very ineptness of the entertainment actually
hurt one."

He paused for a moment, while Ethne pictured to herself the scene which
he had described. She saw Harry Feversham bending over his zither, and
at once she asked herself, "What was he doing with that troupe?" It was
intelligible enough that he would not care to return to England. It was
certain that he would not come back to her, unless she sent for him. And
she knew from what Captain Willoughby had said that he expected no
message from her. He had not left with Willoughby the name of any place
where a letter could reach him. But what was he doing at Wadi Halfa,
masquerading with this itinerant troupe? He had money; so much
Willoughby had told her.

"You spoke to him?" she asked suddenly.

"To whom? Oh, to Harry?" returned Durrance. "Yes, afterwards, when I
found out it was he who was playing the zither."

"Yes, how did you find out?" Ethne asked.

"The waltz came to an end. The old woman sank exhausted upon the bench
against the whitewashed wall; the young man raised his head from his
zither; the old man scraped a new chord upon his violin, and the girl
stood forward to sing. Her voice had youth and freshness, but no other
quality of music. Her singing was as inept as the rest of the
entertainment. Yet the old man smiled, the mother beat time with her
heavy foot, and nodded at her husband with pride in their daughter's
accomplishment. And again in the throng the ill-conditioned talk, the
untranslatable jests of the Arabs and the negroes went their round. It
was horrible, don't you think?"

"Yes," answered Ethne, but slowly, in an absent voice. As she had felt
no sympathy for Durrance when he began to speak, so she had none to
spare for these three outcas