There was to be a complete, an irrevocable end.
We were not to be the merest acquaintances. So I said nothing to you of
the plan which came clear and definite into my mind at the very time
when you gave me the feathers. You see, I might never have succeeded. I
might have died trying to succeed. I might even perhaps have shirked the
attempt. It would be time enough for me to speak if I came back. So I
never formed any wish that you should wait."
"That was what Colonel Trench told me."
"I told him that too?"
"On your first night in the House of Stone."
"Well, it's just the truth. The most I hoped for--and I did hope for
that every hour of every day--was that, if I did come home, you would
take back your feather, and that we might--not renew our friendship
here, but see something of one another afterwards."
"Yes," said Ethne. "Then there will be no parting."
Ethne spoke very simply, without even a sigh, but she looked at Harry
Feversham as she spoke and smiled. The look and the smile told him what
the cost of the separation would be to her. And, understanding what it
meant now, he understood, with an infinitely greater completeness than
he had ever reached in his lonely communings, what it must have meant
six years ago when she was left with her pride stricken as sorely as her
heart.
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