It is true that she was a little afraid.

Just twelve months had passed since, in this very room, on just such a sunlit afternoon, Ethne had bidden Durrance try to forget her, and each letter which she had since received had shown that, whether he tried or not, he had not forgotten.

Even that last one received three weeks ago, the note scrawled in the handwriting of a child, from Wadi Halfa, with the large unsteady words straggling unevenly across the page, and the letters running into one another wherein he had told his calamity and renounced his suit--even that proved, and perhaps more surely than its hopeful forerunners--that he had not forgotten.

As she waited at the window she understood very clearly that it was she herself who must buckle to the hard work of forgetting.

Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always that by no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had not forgotten.
"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and she turned towards Mrs.Adair.
"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs.Adair, "that the two lives will not be more surely spoilt by this way of yours--the way of marriage?
Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite of your will, something of a hindrance and a drag?
Isn't it possible that he may come to feel that too?
I wonder.