Durrance had listened
wondering, for the violin had spoken to him of many things of which the
girl who played it could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous
journeys and the faces of strange countries; of the silver way across
moonlit seas; of the beckoning voices from the under edges of the
desert. It had taken a deeper, a more mysterious tone. It had told of
great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too, eternal, and
with a sort of nobility by reason of their greatness; and of many
unformulated longings beyond the reach of words; but with never a single
note of mere complaint. So it had seemed to Durrance that night as he
had sat listening while Ethne's face was turned away. So it seemed to
him now when he knew that her face was still to be turned away for all
his days. He had drawn a thought from her playing which he was at some
pains to keep definite in his mind. The true music cannot complain.
Therefore it was that as he rode the next morning into the Row his blue
eyes looked out upon the world from his bronzed face with not a jot less
of his usual friendliness. He waited at half-past nine by the clump of
lilacs and laburnums at the end of the sand, but Harry Feversham did not
join him that morning, nor indeed for the next three weeks.
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