Ethne was roused with a start to the consciousness that Durrance was in the room, and she answered like one shaken suddenly out of sleep.
"Why, you told me. At Ramelton, when you first came to Lennon House."
"I have heard it since, though it was not played by you. It was not really played at all. But a melody of it and not even that really, but a suggestion of a melody, I heard stumbled out upon a zither, with many false notes, by a Greek in a bare little whitewashed café, lit by one glaring lamp, at Wadi Halfa."
"This overture?" she said. "How strange!"
"Not so strange after all. For the Greek was Harry Feversham."
So the answer had come. Ethne had no doubt that it was an answer. She sat very still in the moonlight; only had any one bent over her with eyes to see, he would have discovered that her eyelids were closed. There followed a long silence. She did not consider why Durrance, having kept this knowledge secret so long, should speak of it now. She did not ask what Harry Feversham was doing that he must play the zither in a mean café at Wadi Halfa. But it seemed to her that he had spoken to her as she to him. The music had, after all, been a bridge. It was not even strange that he had used Durrance's voice wherewith to speak to her.
"When was this?" she asked at length.
"In February of this year. I will tell you about it."
"Yes, please, tell me."
And Durrance spoke out of the shadows of the room.