"So she has lost everything?" said Durrance.
"She still has a home in Donegal," returned Mrs. Adair.
"And that means a great deal to her," said Durrance, slowly. "Yes, I think you are right."
"It means," said Mrs. Adair, "that Ethne with all her ill-luck has reason to be envied by many other women."
Durrance did not answer that suggestion directly. He watched the carriages drive past, he listened to the chatter and the laughter of the people about him, his eyes were refreshed by the women in their light-coloured frocks; and all the time his slow mind was working toward the lame expression of his philosophy. Mrs. Adair turned to him with a slight impatience in the end.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked.
"That women suffer much more than men when the world goes wrong with them," he answered, and the answer was rather a question than a definite assertion. "I know very little, of course. I can only guess. But I think women gather up into themselves what they have been through much more than we do. To them what is past becomes a real part of them, as much a part of them as a limb; to us it's always something external, at the best the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel. Don't you think so, too? I phrase the thought badly. But put it this way: Women look backwards, we look ahead; so misfortune hits them harder, eh?"
Mrs. Adair answered in her own way. She did not expressly agree. But a certain humility became audible in her voice.
"The mountain village at which Ethne is living," she said in a low voice, "is called Glenalla. A track strikes up towards it from the road halfway between Rathmullen and Ramelton." She rose as she finished the sentence and held out her hand. "Shall I see you?"
"You are still in Hill Street?" said Durrance. "I shall be for a time in London."