With the passage of every minute he realised more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance.

A man not very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always the inheritor of the other places,--how much more it meant to him than to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as clearly?
It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa; the sunlight blazed upon desert and river; not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of any bush.

Calder drank his brandy-and-soda, and slowly that question forced itself more and more into the front of his mind.
Would the woman over in Ireland understand?
He rose from his chair as he heard Colonel Dawson's voice in the mess-room, and taking up his letter, walked away to the post-office.

Durrance's letter was despatched, but somewhere in the Mediterranean it crossed a letter from Ethne, which Durrance received a fortnight later at Cairo.

It was read out to him by Calder, who had obtained leave to come down from Wadi Halfa with his friend.