ed,
as a man will, that with time your friendship might grow into more than
friendship. So long as there was a chance of that, I--Ethne, I could not
let you go. So, I listened for some new softness in your voice, some new
buoyancy in your laughter, some new deep thrill of the heart in the
music which you played, longing for it--how much! Well, to-night I have
burnt my boats. I have admitted to you that I knew friendship limited
your thoughts of me. I have owned to you that there is no hope my sight
will be restored. I have even dared to-night to tell you what I have
kept secret for so long, my meeting with Harry Feversham and the peril
he has run. And why? Because for the first time I have heard to-night
just those signs for which I waited. The new softness, the new pride, in
your voice, the buoyancy in your laughter--they have been audible to me
all this evening. The restraint and the tension were gone from your
manner. And when you played, it was as though some one with just your
skill and knowledge played, but some one who let her heart speak
resonantly through the music as until to-night you have never done.
Ethne, Ethne!"

But at that moment Ethne was in the little enclosed garden whither she
had led Captain Willoughby that morning. Here she was private; her
collie dog had joined her; she had reached the solitude and the silence
which had become necessities to her. A few more words from Durrance and
her prudence would have broken beneath the strain. All that pretence of
affection which during these last months she had so sedulously built up
about him like a wall which he was never to look over, would have been
struck down and levelled to the ground. Durrance, indeed, had already
looked over the wall, was looking over it with amazed eyes at this
instant, but that Ethne did not know, and to hinder him from knowing it
she had fled. The moonlight slept in silver upon the creek; the tall
trees stood dreaming to the stars; the lapping of the tide against the
bank was no louder than the music of a river. She sat down upon the
bench and strove to gather some of the quietude of that summer night
into her heart, and to learn from the growing things of nature about her
something of their patience and their extraordinary perseverance.

But the occurrences of the day had overtaxed her, and she could not.
Only this morning, and in this very garden, the good news had come and
she had regained Harry Feversham. For in that way she