he was at some
pains to keep definite in his mind. The true music cannot complain.

Therefore it was that as he rode the next morning into the Row his blue
eyes looked out upon the world from his bronzed face with not a jot less
of his usual friendliness. He waited at half-past nine by the clump of
lilacs and laburnums at the end of the sand, but Harry Feversham did not
join him that morning, nor indeed for the next three weeks. Ever since
the two men had graduated from Oxford it had been their custom to meet
at this spot and hour, when both chanced to be in town, and Durrance was
puzzled. It seemed to him that he had lost his friend as well.

Meanwhile, however, the rumours of war grew to a certainty; and when at
last Feversham kept the tryst, Durrance had news.

"I told you luck might look my way. Well, she has. I go out to Egypt on
General Graham's staff. There's talk we may run down the Red Sea to
Suakin afterward."

The exhilaration of his voice brought an unmistakable envy into
Feversham's eyes. It seemed strange to Durrance, even at that moment of
his good luck, that Harry Feversham should envy him--strange and rather
pleasant. But he interpreted the envy in the light of his own ambitions.

"It is rough on you," he said sympathetically, "that your regiment has
to stay behind."

Feversham rode by his friend's side in silence. Then, as they came to
the chairs beneath the trees, he said:--

"That was expected. The day you dined with me I sent in my papers."

"That night?" said Durrance, turning in his saddle. "After we had gone?"

"Yes," said Feversham, accepting the correction. He wondered whether it
had been intended. But Durrance rode silently forward. Again Harry
Feversham was conscious of a reproach in his friend's silence, and again
he was wrong. For Durrance suddenly spoke heartily, and with a laugh.

"I remember. You gave us your reasons that night. But for the life of me
I can't help wishing that we had been going out together. When do you
leave for Ireland?"

"To-night."

"So soon?"

They turned their horses and rode westward again down the alley of
trees. The morning was still fresh. The limes and chestnuts had lost
nothing of their early green, and since the May was late that year, its
blossoms still hung delicately white like snow upon the branches and
shone red against the dark rhododendrons. The park shimmered in a haze
of sunlight, and the distant roar of the streets was as the tumbli