But there was more of character. She had suffered; she
had eaten of the tree of knowledge.
"I am sorry," he said. "I did you a great wrong six years ago, and I
need not."
She held out her hand to him.
"Will you give it me, please?"
And for a moment he did not understand.
"That fourth feather," she said.
He drew his letter-case from his coat, and shook two feathers out into
the palm of his hand. The larger one, the ostrich feather, he held out
to her. But she said:--
"Both."
There was no reason why he should keep Castleton's feather any longer.
He handed them both to her, since she asked for them, and she clasped
them, and with a smile treasured them against her breast.
"I have the four feathers now," she said.
"Yes," answered Feversham; "all four. What will you do with them?"
Ethne's smile became a laugh.
"Do with them!" she cried in scorn. "I shall do nothing with them. I
shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep."
She kept them, as she had once kept Harry Feversham's portrait. There
was something perhaps in Durrance's contention that women so much more
than men gather up their experiences and live upon them, looking
backwards.
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