Even that
last one received three weeks ago, the note scrawled in the handwriting
of a child, from Wadi Halfa, with the large unsteady words straggling
unevenly across the page, and the letters running into one another
wherein he had told his calamity and renounced his suit--even that
proved, and perhaps more surely than its hopeful forerunners--that he
had not forgotten. As she waited at the window she understood very
clearly that it was she herself who must buckle to the hard work of
forgetting. Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always that
by no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had not
forgotten.
"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and she
turned towards Mrs. Adair.
"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs. Adair, "that the two lives will
not be more surely spoilt by this way of yours--the way of marriage?
Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite of
your will, something of a hindrance and a drag? Isn't it possible that
he may come to feel that too? I wonder. I very much wonder."
"No," said Ethne, decisively. "I shall not feel it, and he must not."
The two lives, according to Mrs.
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