He tied up his horse and entered in at the gate. A formless barrack
without, the house within was a place of comfort. The room into which he
was shown, with its brasses and its gleaming oak and its wide prospect,
was bright as the afternoon itself. Durrance imagined it, too, with the
blinds drawn upon a winter's night, and the fire red on the hearth, and
the wind skirling about the hills and rapping on the panes.
Ethne greeted him without the least mark of surprise.
"I thought that you would come," she said, and a smile shone upon her
face.
Durrance laughed suddenly as they shook hands, and Ethne wondered why.
She followed the direction of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon
a table at her side. It was pale in colour; there was a mark, too, close
to the bridge, where a morsel of worm-eaten wood had been replaced.
"It is yours," she said. "You were in Egypt. I could not well send it
back to you there."
"I have hoped lately, since I knew," returned Durrance, "that,
nevertheless, you would accept it."
"You see I have," said Ethne, and looking straight into his eyes she
added: "I accepted it some while ago. There was a time when I needed to
be assured that I had sure friends.
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