k and noisome hovel,
dry of throat and fevered with the heat, with a vision before his eyes
of the grass slopes of Ramelton and with the music of the Lennon River
liquid in his ears.

"One would pray for death," said Ethne, slowly, "unless--" She was on
the point of adding "unless one went there deliberately with a fixed
thing to do," but she cut the sentence short. Durrance carried it on:--

"Unless there was a chance of escape," he said. "And there is a
chance--if Feversham is in Omdurman."

He was afraid that he had allowed himself to say too much about the
horrors of the prison in Omdurman, and he added: "Of course, what I have
described to you is mere hearsay and not to be trusted. We have no
knowledge. Prisoners may not have such bad times as we think;" and
thereupon he let the subject drop. Nor did Ethne mention it again. It
occurred to her at times to wonder in what way Durrance had understood
her abrupt disappearance from the drawing-room on the night when he had
told her of his meeting with Harry Feversham. But he never referred to
it himself, and she thought it wise to imitate his example. The
noticeable change in his manner, the absence of that caution which had
so distressed her, allayed her fears. It seemed that he had found for
himself some perfectly simple and natural explanation. At times, too,
she asked herself why Durrance had told her of that meeting in Wadi
Halfa, and of Feversham's subsequent departure to the south. But for
that she found an explanation--a strange explanation, perhaps, but it
was simple enough and satisfactory to her. She believed that the news
was a message of which Durrance was only the instrument. It was meant
for her ears, and for her comprehension alone, and Durrance was bound to
convey it to her by the will of a power above him. His real reason she
had not stayed to hear.

During the month of September, then, they kept up the pretence. Every
morning when Durrance was in Devonshire he would come across the fields
to Ethne at The Pool, and Mrs. Adair, watching them as they talked and
laughed without a shadow of embarrassment or estrangement, grew more
angry, and found it more difficult to hold her peace and let the
pretence go on. It was a month of strain and tension to all three, and
not one of them but experienced a great relief when Durrance visited his
oculist in London. And those visits increased in number, and lengthened
in duration. Even Ethne was grateful for them.