She had broken off one of those
feathers and added it on her own account to the three.
The thing which she had done was cruel, no doubt. But she wished to make
an end--a complete, irrevocable end; though her voice was steady and her
face, despite its pallor, calm, she was really tortured with humiliation
and pain. All the details of Harry Feversham's courtship, the
interchange of looks, the letters she had written and received, the
words which had been spoken, tingled and smarted unbearably in her
recollections. Their lips had touched--she recalled it with horror. She
desired never to see Harry Feversham after this night. Therefore she
added her fourth feather to the three.
Harry Feversham took the feathers as she bade him, without a word of
remonstrance, and indeed with a sort of dignity which even at that
moment surprised her. All the time, too, he had kept his eyes steadily
upon hers, he had answered her questions simply, there had been nothing
abject in his manner; so that Ethne already began to regret this last
thing which she had done. However, it _was_ done. Feversham had taken
the four feathers.
He held them in his fingers as though he was about to tear them across.
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