ts of fortune. She was too absorbed in the
mystery of Harry Feversham's presence at Wadi Halfa. She was listening
too closely for the message which he sent to her. Through the open
window the moon threw a broad panel of silver light upon the floor of
the room close to her feet. She sat gazing into it as she listened, as
though it was itself a window through which, if she looked but hard
enough, she might see, very small and far away, that lighted cafe
blazing upon the street of the little town of Tewfikieh on the frontier
of the Soudan.

"Well?" she asked. "And after the song was ended?"

"The young man with his back towards me," Durrance resumed, "began to
fumble out a solo upon the zither. He struck so many false notes, no
tune was to be apprehended at the first. The laughter and noise grew
amongst the crowd, and I was just turning away, rather sick at heart,
when some notes, a succession of notes played correctly by chance,
suddenly arrested me. I listened again, and a sort of haunting melody
began to emerge--a weak thin thing with no soul in it, a ghost of a
melody, and yet familiar. I stood listening in the street of sand,
between the hovels fringed by a row of stunted trees, and I was carried
away out of the East to Ramelton and to a summer night beneath a melting
sky of Donegal, when you sat by the open window as you sit now and
played the Musoline Overture, which you have played again to-night."

"It was a melody from this overture?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, and it was Harry Feversham who played the melody. I did not guess
it at once. I was not very quick in those days."

"But you are now," said Ethne.

"Quicker, at all events. I should have guessed it now. Then, however, I
was only curious. I wondered how it was that an itinerant Greek came to
pick up the tune. At all events, I determined to reward him for his
diligence. I thought that you would like me to."

"Yes," said Ethne, in a whisper.

"So, when he came out from the cafe, and with his hat in his hand passed
through the jeering crowd, I threw a sovereign into the hat. He turned
to me with a start of surprise. In spite of his beard I knew him.
Besides, before he could check himself, he cried out 'Jack!'"

"You can have made no mistake, then," said Ethne, in a wondering voice.
"No, the man who strummed upon the zither was--" the Christian name was
upon her lips, but she had the wit to catch it back unuttered--"was Mr.
Feversham. But he knew no music