The incredible words were spoken that evening. Ethne went into her farm-house and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coals with that stillness of attitude which was a sure sign with her of tense emotion. The moment so eagerly looked for had come, and it was over. She was alone now in her remote little village, out of the world in the hills, and more alone than she had been since Willoughby sailed on that August morning down the Salcombe estuary². From the time of Willoughby's coming she had looked forward night and day to the one half-hour during which Harry³ Feversham would be with her. The half-hour had come and passed. She knew now how she had counted upon its coming, how she had lived for it. She felt lonely in a rather empty world. But it was part of her nature that she had foreseen this sense of loneliness; she had known that there would be a bad hour for her after she had sent Harry Feversham away, that all her heart and soul would clamour to her to call him back. And she forced herself, as she sat shivering by the fire, to remember that she had always foreseen and had always looked beyond it. To-morrow she would know again that they had not parted forever, to-morrow she would compare the parting of to-day with the parting on the night of the ball at Lennon House, and recognise what a small thing this was to that. She fell to wondering what Harry Feversham would do now that he had returned, and while she was building up for him a future of great distinction she felt Dermod's old collie dog nuzzling at her hand with his sure instinct that his mistress was in distress⁴. Ethne rose from her chair and took the dog's head between her hands and kissed it. He was very old, she thought; he would die soon and leave her, and then there would be years and years, perhaps, before she lay down in her bed and knew the great moment was at hand.  
There came a knock upon the door, and a servant told her that Colonel Durrance was waiting.
 
"Yes," she said, and as he entered the room she went forward to meet him. She did not shirk the part which she had allotted⁵ to herself. She stepped out from the secret chamber⁶ of her grief as soon as she was summoned.
 
She talked with her visitor as though no unusual thing had happened an hour before, she even talked of their marriage and the rebuilding of Lennon House. It was difficult, but she had grown used to difficulties. Only that night Durrance made her path a little harder to tread. He asked her, after the maid had brought in the tea, to play to him the Musoline Overture⁷ upon her violin.
 
"Not to-night," said Ethne. "I am rather tired." And she had hardly spoken before she changed her mind. Ethne was determined⁸ that in the small things as well as in the great she must not shirk. The small things with their daily happenings were just those about which she must be most careful. "Still I think that I can play the overture," she said with a smile, and she took down her violin. She played the overture through from the beginning to the end. Durrance stood at the window with his back towards her until she had ended. Then he walked to her side.
 
"I was rather a brute," he said quietly, "to ask you to play that overture to-night."
 
"I wasn't anxious to play," she answered as she laid the violin aside.
 
"I know. But I was anxious to find out something, and I knew no other way of finding it out."
 
Ethne turned up to him a startled face.
 
"What do you mean?" she asked in a voice of suspense⁹.
 
"You are so seldom off your guard. Only indeed at rare times when you play. Once before when you played that overture you were off your guard. I thought that if I could get you to play it again to-night—the overture which was once strummed out in a dingy¹⁰ café at Wadi Halfa—to-night again I should find you off your guard."
 
His words took her breath away and the colour from her cheeks. She got up slowly from her chair and stared at him wide-eyed. He could not know. It was impossible. He did not know.
 
But Durrance went quietly on.
 
"Well? Did you take back your feather? The fourth one?"
 
These to Ethne were the incredible words. Durrance spoke¹ them with a smile upon his face. It took her a long time to understand that he had actually spoken them. She was not sure at the first that her overstrained senses were not playing her tricks; but he repeated his question, and she could no longer disbelieve or misunderstand.
 
"Who told you of any fourth feather?" she asked.
 
"Trench¹¹," he answered. "I met him at Dover. But he only told me of the fourth feather," said Durrance. "I knew of the three before. Trench would never have told me of the fourth had I not known of the three. For I should not have met him as he landed from the steamer at Dover. I should not have asked him, 'Where is Harry Feversham?' And for me to know of the three was enough."
 
"How do you know?" she cried in a kind of despair, and coming close to her he took gently hold of her arm.
 
"But since I know," he protested, "what does it matter how I know? I have known a long while, ever since Captain Willoughby came to The Pool with the first feather. I waited to tell you that I knew until Harry Feversham came back, and he came to-day."
 
Ethne sat down in her chair again. She was stunned¹² by Durrance's unexpected disclosure. She had so carefully guarded her secret, that to realise that for a year it had been no secret came as a shock to her. But, even in the midst of her confusion, she understood that she must have time to gather up her faculties¹³ again under command. So she spoke of the unimportant thing to gain the time.
 
"You were in the church, then? Or you heard us upon the steps? Or you met—him as he rode away?"
 
"Not one of the conjectures¹⁴ is right," said Durrance, with a smile. Ethne had hit upon the right subject to delay the statement of the decision to which she knew very well that he had come. Durrance had his vanities like others; and in particular one vanity which had sprung up within him since he had become blind. He prided himself upon the quickness of his perception. It was a delight to him to make discoveries which no one expected a man who had lost his sight to make, and to announce them unexpectedly. I............