"I have the four feathers now," she said.
"Yes," answered Feversham; "all four. What will you do with them?"
Ethne's smile became a laugh.
"Do with them!" she cried in scorn. "I shall do nothing with them. I shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep."
She kept them, as she had once kept Harry Feversham's portrait. There was something perhaps in Durrance's contention that women so much more than men gather up their experiences and live upon them, looking backwards. Feversham, at all events, would now have dropped the feathers then and there and crushed them into the dust of the path with his heel; they had done their work. They could no longer reproach, they were no longer needed to encourage, they were dead things. Ethne, however, held them tight in her hand; to her they were not dead.
"Colonel Trench was here a fortnight ago," she said. "He told me you were bringing it back to me."
"But he did not know of the fourth feather," said Feversham. "I never told any man that I had it."
"Yes. You told Colonel Trench on your first night in the House of Stone at Omdurman. He told me. I no longer hate him," she added, but without a smile and quite seriously, as though it was an important statement which needed careful recognition.
"I am glad of that," said Feversham. "He is a great friend of mine."
Ethne was silent for a moment or two. Then she said:—