what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly
of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful
nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about
her. People came--almost "everybody" came--to her house, and would
come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband
intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not
found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very
much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for
dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at
all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come
and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of
nights.

In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing,
though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and
with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her
face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the
place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in
its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most delicate
film--the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain
gives.

Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her
husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted
sharply--something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was
uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did
now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which
came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not
the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of
Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in
broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her
marriage--that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a
cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two
would meet, and she knew how it would be--an outward semblance, a
superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of
intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again;
only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit.

Yet when she was dressed--in pure white, with only a string of pearls,
the smallest she had, round her neck--she was like that white flower
which had been placed on her pillow last night.

Tur