The room into which he was shown, with its brasses and its gleaming oak and its wide prospect, was bright as the afternoon itself.

Durrance imagined it, too, with the blinds drawn upon a winter's night, and the fire red on the hearth, and the wind skirling about the hills and rapping on the panes.
Ethne greeted him without the least mark of surprise.
"I thought that you would come," she said, and a smile shone upon her face.
Durrance laughed suddenly as they shook hands, and Ethne wondered why.
She followed the direction of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon a table at her side.

It was pale in colour; there was a mark, too, close to the bridge, where a morsel of worm-eaten wood had been replaced.
"It is yours," she said.

"You were in Egypt.

I could not well send it back to you there." "I have hoped lately, since I knew," returned Durrance, "that, nevertheless, you would accept it." "You see I have," said Ethne, and looking straight into his eyes she added: "I accepted it some while ago.