at least true to each other, true at the last to the
thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because we
had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean that I
should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has possessed
me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have done the
one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the field. I have
made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It may be I have
done all I was meant to do in doing that--it may be. In any case, the
thing I did would stand as an accomplished work--it would represent one
definite and original thing; one piece of work in design all my own, in
accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go then--together--with
only the one big violence to the conventions of the world, and take the
law into our own hands? Rudyard, who understands Life's violence, would
understand that; what he could never understand would be perpetual
artifice, unseemly secretiveness. He himself would have been a great
filibuster in the olden days; he would have carried off the wives and
daughters of the chiefs and kings he conquered; but he would never have
stolen into the secret garden at night and filched with the hand of the
sneak-thief--never.

"To go with me--away, and start afresh. There will be always work to
do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we
would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake
you made in not coming to me and so fulfilling the old promise. To set
that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great
stroke--that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease of
that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I seem
to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone forever,
saying that you had given me gifts--success and love; and now to go and
leave you in peace.

"Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens
for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the
strife of the soul for peace, for fruition.

"That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now,
before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in
chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone,
binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something
accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last
effort t