"Well, it's just the truth. The most I hoped for—and I did hope for that every hour of every day—was that, if I did come home, you would take back your feather, and that we might—not renew our friendship here, but see something of one another afterwards."
"Yes," said Ethne. "Then there will be no parting."
Ethne spoke very simply, without even a sigh, but she looked at Harry Feversham as she spoke and smiled. The look and the smile told him what the cost of the separation would be to her. And, understanding what it meant now, he understood, with an infinitely greater completeness than he had ever reached in his lonely communings, what it must have meant six years ago when she was left with her pride stricken as sorely as her heart.
"What trouble you must have gone through!" he cried, and she turned and looked him over.
"Not I alone," she said gently. "I passed no nights in the House of Stone."
"But it was my fault. Do you remember what you said when the morning came through the blinds? 'It's not right that one should suffer so much pain.' It was not right."
"I had forgotten the words—oh, a long time since—until Colonel Trench reminded me. I should never have spoken them. When I did I was not thinking they would live so in your thoughts. I am sorry that I spoke them."
"Oh, they were just enough. I never blamed you for them," said Feversham, with a laugh. "I used to think that they would be the last words I should hear when I turned my face to the wall. But you have given me others to-day wherewith to replace them."
"Thank you," she said quietly.
There was nothing more to be said, and Feversham wondered why Ethne did not rise from her seat in the pew. It did not occur to him to talk of his travels or adventures. The occasion seemed too serious, too vital. They were together to decide the most solemn issue in their lives. Once the decision was made, as now it had been made, he felt that they could hardly talk on other topics. Ethne, however, still kept him at her side. Though she sat so calmly and still, though her face was quiet in its look of gravity, her heart ached with longing. Just for a little longer, she pleaded to herself. The sunlight was withdrawing from the walls of the church. She measured out a space upon the walls where it still glowed bright. When all that space was cold grey stone, she would send Harry Feversham away.