He was applying, as he thought, a final test upon which his life and hers should be decided.

Ethne's violin would tell him assuredly whether he was right or no.

Would friendship speak from it or the something more than friendship?
Ethne played the overture, and as she played she forgot that Durrance was in the room behind her.

In the garden the air was still and summer-warm and fragrant; on the creek the moonlight lay like a solid floor of silver; the trees stood dreaming to the stars; and as the music floated loud out across the silent lawn, Ethne had a sudden fancy that it might perhaps travel down the creek and over Salcombe Bar and across the moonlit seas, and strike small yet wonderfully clear like fairy music upon the ears of a man sleeping somewhere far away beneath the brightness of the southern stars with the cool night wind of the desert blowing upon his face.
"If he could only hear!" she thought.

"If he could only wake and know that what he heard was a message of friendship!" And with this fancy in her mind she played with such skill as she had never used before; she made of her violin a voice of sympathy.