He had done you some great wrong. That I know; that I knew.
But I could not remember it then. I only remembered that years before
Harry Feversham had been my friend, my one great friend; that we had
rowed in the same college boat at Oxford, he at stroke, I at seven;
that the stripes on his jersey during three successive eights had made
my eyes dizzy during those last hundred yards of spurt past the barges.
We had bathed together in Sandford Lasher on summer afternoons. We had
had supper on Kennington Island; we had cut lectures and paddled up the
Cher to Islip. And here he was at Wadi Halfa, herding with that troupe,
an outcast, sunk to such a depth of ill-fortune that he must come to
that squalid little town and play the zither vilely before a crowd of
natives and a few Greek clerks for his night's lodging and the price of
a meal."
"No," Ethne interrupted suddenly. "It was not for that reason that he
went to Wadi Halfa."
"Why, then?" asked Durrance.
"I cannot think. But he was not in any need of money. His father had
continued his allowance, and he had accepted it."
"You are sure?"
"Quite sure. I heard it only to-day," said Ethne.
It was a slip, but Ethne for once was off her guard that night.
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