"Durrance stood at the window, after I had told them about you, Ethne,"
and Trench repeated the name to himself. It was to a woman, then, that
his new-found compatriot, this friend of Durrance, in his delirium
imagined himself to be speaking--a woman named Ethne. Trench could
recall no such name; but the voice in the dark went on.
"All the time when I was proposing to send in my papers, after the
telegram had come, he stood at the window of my rooms with his back to
me, looking out across the park. I fancied he blamed me. But I think now
he was making up his mind to lose you.... I wonder."
Trench uttered so startled an exclamation that Ibrahim turned round.
"Is he dead?"
"No, he lives, he lives."
It was impossible, Trench argued. He remembered quite clearly Durrance
standing by a window with his back to the room. He remembered a telegram
coming which took a long while in the reading--which diffused among all
except Durrance an inexplicable suspense. He remembered, too, a man who
spoke of his betrothal and of sending in his papers. But surely this
could not be the man. Was the woman's name Ethne? A woman of
Donegal--yes; and this man had spoken of sailing out of Dublin Bay--he
had spoken, too, of a feather.
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