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"Oh," she said, "Colonel Durrance certainly knew that you were in Omdurman. He saw you in Wadi Halfa, and he heard that you had gone south into the desert. He was distressed about it; he asked a friend to get news of you, and the friend got news that you were in Omdurman. He told me so himself, and yes, he told me that he would try to arrange for your escape.
The moonlight struck full upon Durrance, and she saw a comprehension gradually dawn in his face that some one was standing close to him. "Ethne," he said a third time, and now he appealed. He stretched out a hand timidly and touched her dress. "It is not Ethne," he said with a start. "No, it is not Ethne," Mrs. Adair answered quickly.
It followed that a second feather had been sent to Ramelton, and that Trench had sent it. To-night Durrance was able to join Major Castleton to Trench and Willoughby. Ethne's satisfaction at the death of a man whom she did not know could mean but the one thing. There would be the same obligation resting upon Feversham with regard to Major Castleton if he lived.
"I too remember that night," said Walters. "Durrance dined at the mess and went away early to prepare for his journey." "His preparations were made already," said Calder. "He went away early, as you say. But he did not go to his quarters. He walked along the river-bank to Tewfikieh."
There was a question which he had it in his mind to ask, but the question was delicate. He stood uneasily on the steps of the house. "Didn't I hear, Durrance," he said with an air of carelessness, "that you were engaged to Miss Eustace?" "I think I said that Harry would regain all that he had lost except his career," said Durrance. He stepped into the carriage and drove off to the station.
"My father would send the police to fetch them if they stayed away, just as he fetched your friend Mr. Durrance here. By the way, Mr. Durrance has sent me a present a Guarnerius violin." The door opened, and a thin, lank old man, with a fierce peaked face like a bird of prey, came out upon the steps.
"Whereas now?" she repeated. "I remain your friend, which I would rather be than your unloved husband," he said very gently. Ethne made no rejoinder. The decision had been taken out of her hands. "You sent Harry away this afternoon," said Durrance. "You said good-bye to him twice." At the "twice" Ethne raised her head, but before she could speak Durrance explained:
He had shown a stubborn front to the world; he had made it a matter of pride that no one should be able to point a finger at him and say, "There's a man struck down." But on this one occasion and in these few words he revealed to Durrance the depth of his grief. Durrance understood how unendurable the chatter of his friends about the old days of war in the snowy trenches would have been.
"Yes," said Dawson, and he hitched his chair a little nearer. Calder was the one man in Wadi Halfa who could claim something like intimacy with Durrance.
He saw the sun rise daily beyond the bend of the river behind the tall palm trees of Khartum and burn across the sky, and the months dragged one after the other. On an evening towards the end of August, in that year when Durrance came home blind from the Soudan, he sat in a corner of the enclosure watching the sun drop westwards towards the plain with an agony of anticipation.
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