A. E. W. Mason

“ That makes me out most selfish. I was merely wondering why you preferred to wait, why you insist upon it. For, of course, although one hopes and prays with all one's soul that you will get your sight back, the fact of a cure can make no difference."
She spoke slowly, and her voice again had a ring of pleading. This time Durrance did not confirm her words, and she repeated them with a greater emphasis, "It can make no difference."
Durrance started like a man roused from an abstraction.
"I beg your pardon, Ethne," he said. "I was thinking at the moment of Harry Feversham. ”

“ Adair had no doubt of it. "For my part, I am glad," she said, and she was—fiercely glad that blindness had disabled Durrance. For if her opportunity ever came, as it seemed to her now more and more likely to come, blindness reserved him to her, as no man was ever reserved to any woman. So jealous was she of his every word and look that his dependence upon her would be the extreme of pleasure. She watched Ethne and Durrance meet on the lawn at the foot of the terrace steps. She saw them turn and walk side by side across the grass towards the creek. ”

“ Durrance shrugged his shoulders.
"That one must wait. Only time can show whether a cure is possible or not," he answered, and Ethne bent forward a little and scrutinised his face as though she doubted that he spoke the truth.
"But must you and I wait?" she asked.
"Surely," he returned. "It would be wiser on all counts." And thereupon he asked her suddenly a question of which she did not see the drift. "It was Mrs. Adair, I imagine, who proposed this plan that I should come home to Guessens and that you should stay with her here across the fields?" ”

“ Haven't you noticed how quick he has grown and is growing? Quick to interpret your silences, to infer what you do not say from what you do, to fill out your sentences, to make your movements the commentary of your words? ”

“ They did not penetrate to her mind, for as she looked across the stone-flagged terrace and down the broad shallow flight of steps to the lawn, she asked abruptly:—
"Do you think he has any hope whatever that he will recover his sight?"
The question had not occurred to Mrs. Adair before, and she gave to it now no importance in her thoughts.
"Would he travel up to town so often to see his oculist if he had none?" she asked in reply. "Of course he hopes."
"I am afraid," said Ethne, and she turned with a sudden movement towards her friend. ”

“ Willoughby took a letter-case from his breast, opened it with deliberation, and shook out from one of its pockets into the palm of his hand a tiny, soiled, white feather. He held it out to Ethne.
"I have come to give you this."
Ethne did not take it. In fact, she positively shrank from it.
"Why?" she asked unsteadily.
"Three white feathers, three separate accusations of cowardice, were sent to Feversham by three separate men. This is actually one of those feathers which were forwarded from his lodgings to Ramelton five years ago. I am one of the three men who sent them. ”

“ Feversham as a man whom one has known well, and who is now dead."
They were walking toward the wide gap in the line of trees upon the bank of the creek, and as Ethne spoke she raised her eyes from the ground. She saw that the little boat which she had noticed tacking up the creek while she hesitated upon the terrace had run its nose into the shore. The sail had been lowered, the little pole mast stuck up above the grass bank of the garden, and upon the bank itself a man was standing and staring vaguely towards the house as though not very sure of his ground. ”