le. His
primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not bitterly, but
confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it was; and he
thought that if he had patience he would come to understand it in time.
But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day
before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with
Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a
wild, aching protest against it all. Not against Jasmine--he did not
blame her; he only realized that she was different from what he had
thought she was; that they were both different from what they had been;
and that--the light had gone from the evening sky.

But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed
his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking,
intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply
never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which he
had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the
universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had
married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant,
except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as
Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to the
woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and
there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not
a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration.

Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had
involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in the
distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And now,
as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,--so did
the weight of slander drag him down--his thoughts suddenly saw a
picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was
after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives
lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the
Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in
arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face
danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open road
together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where the
great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a stray
lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on alone
to a