Ethne stood at the drawing-room window of the house in Hill Street. Mrs. Adair sat in front of her tea-table. Both women were waiting, and they were both listening for some particular sound to rise up from the street and penetrate¹ into the room. The window stood open that they might hear it the more quickly. It was half-past five in the afternoon. June had come round again with the exhilaration of its sunlight, and London had sparkled into a city of pleasure and green trees. In the houses opposite, the windows were gay with flowers; and in the street below, the carriages rolled easily towards the Park. A jingle² of bells rose upwards³ suddenly and grew loud. Mrs. Adair raised her head quickly.  
"That's a cab," she said.
 
"Yes."
 
Ethne leaned forward and looked down. "But it's not stopping here;" and the jingle grew fainter and died away.
 
Mrs. Adair looked at the clock.
 
"Colonel Durrance is late," she said, and she turned curiously⁴ towards Ethne. It seemed to her that Ethne had spoken her "yes" with much more of suspense⁶ than eagerness; her attitude as she leaned forward at the window had been almost one of apprehension⁷; and though Mrs. Adair was not quite sure, she fancied that she detected relief when the cab passed by the house and did not stop. "I wonder why you didn't go to the station and meet Colonel Durrance?" she asked slowly.
 
The answer came promptly⁸ enough.
 
"He might have thought that I had come because I looked upon him as rather helpless, and I don't wish him to think that. He has his servant with him." Ethne looked again out of the window, and once or twice she made a movement as if she was about to speak and then thought silence the better part. Finally, however, she made up her mind.
 
"You remember the telegram I showed to you?"
 
"From Lieutenant⁹ Calder, saying that Colonel Durrance had gone blind?"
 
"Yes. I want you to promise never to mention it. I don't want him to know that I ever received it."
 
Mrs. Adair was puzzled, and she hated to be puzzled. She had been shown the telegram, but she had not been told that Ethne had written to Durrance, pledging herself to him immediately upon its receipt. Ethne, when she showed the telegram, had merely said, "I am engaged to him." Mrs. Adair at once believed that the engagement had been of some standing¹¹, and she had been allowed to continue in that belief.
 
"You will promise?" Ethne insisted.
 
"Certainly, my dear, if you like," returned Mrs. Adair, with an ungracious shrug¹² of the shoulders. "But there is a reason, I suppose. I don't understand why you exact the promise."
 
"Two lives must not be spoilt because of me."
 
There was some ground for Mrs. Adair's suspicion that Ethne expected the blind man to whom she was betrothed¹³, with apprehension. It is true that she was a little afraid. Just twelve months had passed since, in this very room, on just such a sunlit afternoon, Ethne had bidden Durrance try to forget her, and each letter which she had since received had shown that, whether he tried or not, he had not forgotten. Even that last one received three weeks ago, the note scrawled¹⁴ in the handwriting of a child, from Wadi Halfa, with the large unsteady words straggling unevenly¹⁵ across the page, and the letters running into one another wherein he had told his calamity¹⁶ and renounced¹⁷ his suit—even that proved, and perhaps more surely than its hopeful forerunners—that he had not forgotten. As she waited at the window she understood very clearly that it was she herself who must buckle¹⁸ to the hard work of forgetting. Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always that by no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had not forgotten.
 
"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and she turned towards Mrs. Adair.
 
"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs. Adair, "that the two lives will not be more surely spoilt by this way of yours—the way of marriage? Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite of your will, something of a hindrance¹⁹ and a drag? Isn't it possible that he may come to feel that too? I wonder. I very much wonder."
 
"No," said Ethne, decisively. "I shall not feel it, and he must not."
 
The two lives, according to Mrs. Adair, were not the lives of Durrance and Harry²⁰ Feversham, but of Durrance and Ethne herself. There she was wrong; but Ethne did not dispute the point, she was indeed rather glad that her friend was wrong, and she allowed her to continue in her wrong belief.
 
Ethne resumed her watch at the window, foreseeing her life, planning it out so that never might she be caught off her guard. The task would be difficult, no doubt, and it was no wonder that in these minutes while she waited fear grew upon her lest she should fail. But the end was well worth the effort, and she set her eyes upon that. Durrance had lost everything which made life to him worth living the moment he went blind—everything, except one thing. "What should I do if I were crippled?" he had said to Harry Feversham on the morning when for the last time they had ridden together in the Row. "A clever man might put up with it. But what should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my days?" Ethne had not heard the words, but she understood the man well enough without them. He was by birth the inheritor of the other places, and he had lost his heritage. The things which delighted him, the long journeys, the faces of strange countries, the camp-fire, a mere¹⁰ spark of red light amidst black and empty silence, the hours of sleep in the open under bright stars, the cool night wind of the desert, and the work of government—all these things he had lost. Only one thing remained to him—herself, and only, as she knew very well, herself so long as he could believe she wanted him. And while she was still occupied with her resolve, the cab for which she waited stopped unnoticed at the door. It was not until Durrance's servant had actually rung the bell that her attention was again attracted to the street.
 
"He has come!" she said with a start.
 
Durrance, it was true, was not particularly acute; he had never been inquisitive²¹; he took his friends as he found them; he put them under no microscope. It would have been easy at any time, Ethne reflected, to quiet his suspicions, should he have ever come to entertain any. But now it would be easier than ever. There was no reason for apprehension. Thus she argued, but in spite of the argument she rather nerved herself to an encounter than went forward to welcome her betrothed.
 
Mrs. Adair slipped out of the room, so that Ethne was alone when Durrance entered at the door. She did not move immediately; she retained her attitude and position, expecting that the change in him would for the first moment shock her. But she was surprised; for the particular changes which she had expected were noticeable only through their absence. His face was worn, no doubt, his hair had gone grey, but there was no air of helplessness or uncertainty²², and it was that which for his own sake she most dreaded²³. He walked forward into the room as though his eyes saw; his memory seemed to tell him exactly where each piece of the furniture stood. The most that he did was once or twice to put out a hand where he expected a chair.
 
Ethne drew silently back into the window rather at a loss with what words to greet him, and immediately he smiled and came straight towards her.
 
"Ethne," he said.
 
"It isn't true, then," she exclaimed. "You have recovered." The words were forced from her by the readiness of his movement.
 
"It is quite true, and I have not recovered," he answered. "But you moved at the window and so I knew that you were there."
 
"How did you know? I made no noise."
 
"No, but the window's open. The noise in the street became suddenly louder, so I knew that some one in front of the window had moved aside. I guessed that it was you."
 
Their words were thus not perhaps the most customary greeting between a couple meeting on the first occasion after they have become engaged, but they served to hinder embarrassment²⁴. Ethne shrank from any perfunctory expression of regret, knowing that there was no need for it, and Durrance had no wish to hear it. For there were many things which these two understood each other well enough to take as said. They did no more than shake hands when they had spoken, and Ethne moved back into the room.
 
"I will give you some tea," she said, "then we can talk."
 
"Yes, we must have a talk, mustn't we?" Durrance answered seriously. He threw off his serious air, however, and chatted with good humour about t............